Us Conductors

by Sean Michaels

  “Do you admit you are a foreign spy?”

  “I lived in the Plaza Hotel. I shook hands with John D. Rockefeller. I built a television.”

  “You revealed Soviet technology to the Americans?”

  For so long I stood and shouted, incapable of telling lies. It would have been so easy to confess, conceding to these men’s reality. But I was a scientist. Clara, I was a scientist. All we have is accuracy, transparency, veracity. Only truthful data gives us honest conclusions. So I clung to the shimmering facts, like grasping at fog, until finally I stopped. Finally, I stopped. I swallowed and shook my head and as if waking from a dream, I said: “I was a foreign agent.”

  I RELINQUISHED SOMETHING when I said that. Something thin and fragile, like a blade of grass. It was so easy to give away. In the relief that followed my concession, my skinny lie, I wondered why I had not relinquished it sooner. They let me sit in a chair and gave me a glass of water. I had relinquished my claim to stand beside Lomonosov, Faraday, Archimedes, Newton—any of them. In that trembling instant, I was grateful to have lost it. I wanted simply to sleep. I wanted to lay down my head and sleep.

  It is now eight years later and I am no longer grateful. When I recall my betrayal at Butyrka, those leaning silhouettes, what I feel is wrath. Incandescent wrath and raw, desperate sadness over the thing I gave away. The thing I traded for a sip of water and the right to close my eyes.

  BEFORE THEY LET ME sleep, they made me sign a piece of paper. I signed it. Then I lay somewhere, on a bench or on the floor, in my own cell or in a crowd—I don’t remember.

  THE GUARDS SHOOK ME awake and brought me to a different room. They told me to write the story of my life, my story as a foreign agent. There were four walls, a desk, a cot, a typewriter. A cot! They brought me food on wooden trays. Such generosity from my wardens. “Write the story of your life, your story as a foreign agent.” Now that I had confessed, they wanted flesh for the fiction. I slept and I ate and I stared into the dull eyes of my guards. Their patience was not limitless. I sat at the desk, my fingers on the keys, gazing at a wall painted baby blue. I remembered then the cabin in which I had come from overseas. Another locked room, with cot and typewriter. Blue rooms do not have happy endings.

  I wrote about my eleven years in America. My arrival and departure, concerts, contracts, meetings, inventions. In a broken, scattered way, I wrote what I recalled. I gave them the plain, tired truth, knowing they would twist it to their uses. I did not know what would happen when I finished writing, so I wrote on. I wrote about breakfasts, patents, sketched teletouch circuits.

  My rebellion was this: I did not write about you. My jailers would have no part of you. I did not write about Katia. I did not write about Danny Finch. I did not write about my wife, Lavinia Williams. In this way I resisted. All of you remained free.

  After four days, they took the pages away. They took the typewriter away. Two lieutenants appeared, like scarecrows. The taller read aloud the resolution:

  “You, Lev Sergeyvich Termen, born 1896 in Leningrad, nonparty member, citizen of the USSR, are found to have been a foreign spy and a member of a fascist organization.”

  I was not a foreign spy. I was not a member of a fascist organization.

  I signed my name.

  A MAN LEAVES PURGATORY. The denizens of the place take him somewhere else. It was as if a hidden wall had been drawn up, like a row of teeth: I followed the passageway deeper into Butyrskaya, to a room where only the guilty abide.

  A jail is not like other places because you look around and there is a thief, there is a killer. All these predators, convicted and confessed, four steps from your heart. Criminals and counterrevolutionaries, every one of us a zek, locked in a single cell.

  It was not the same as the cell where I first stayed. Here there were rules. There was society—a wrecked world with law and order. The senior zeks slept by the window. I was a new zek: I slept by the fetid latrine. Whereas the simple criminals, the rapists and murderers, were considered allies of the Revolution, and assigned bunks, I was a political prisoner, a class enemy. I came into a brick room and faces turned to examine me. I slept on the floor. None of the zeks had mattresses, pillows, room to breathe. We slept shoulder to shoulder. The blue light stayed on. We were not permitted to sleep when it was day but we were permitted to sleep when it was night. After my torture, all of this was a reprieve. A domain of rules is a system, and I had spent my life taking systems apart, turning them over, intuiting their function. Finally, I thought, a problem I may attempt to solve. Here was a machine; I would try to figure it out.

  So I learned. I learned to find stray threads, to make needles out of matchsticks, to mend my shredded clothes. I learned to rise quickly in the morning to queue for the shower. I learned to use the prisoners’ library, Butyrka’s sole consolation.

  I worried about my aunt Eva.

  I made no friends but two enemies.

  Their names were Fyodor and Ears. They were criminals, not politicals. They sat on plywood bunks and spat at me. Fyodor was large, with an elongated frame and enormous fists. His face was round, almost cherubic, with shockingly green eyes. Ears was long and skinny, with a cruel look; his namesake parts faced out like cupped hands.

  My very first morning in the cell, after we had received our bread, our rotting cabbage, Fyodor demanded my portion. He was crouching beside me, eating his own, chewing. He asked with a gentle, light tone, as if he were asking me to pass the wine. Ears, beside him, stared at me. His stare had a sort of edged curiosity. With his eyes he was inquiring, What are you going to do? Fyodor chewed, cleaned his teeth with his tongue. For a moment I felt like a kindly uncle sitting with his nephews. But then the silence stretched on and I understood that this conversation was as cold and unfamiliar as the prison brick. I saw that others were watching us, the newcomer with the teenage thugs. I was sitting a few inches from the toilet. I took a short breath and held out my bowl. Fyodor took it with a bow of the head, a sweet grin. He smirked at Ears. “There’s a good friend,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Joseph,” I said after a moment.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “I heard them say your name when you came in. Lev.”

  I looked at the palms of my hands. “Yes, it’s Lev,” I said.

  “I am Fyodor. This is Ears. Welcome to Butyrskaya.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Why the fuck should I tell you?” said Fyodor.

  They got to their feet. Ears put his hands in his torn pockets and said, “Thanks for the breakfast, old man.”

  IT WENT ON LIKE THIS. Fyodor and Ears did not claim all of my meals, only some of them. Alive, I was a renewable resource. They crouched beside me, chewing slowly, and I had nowhere to go. Although I was not the only person they picked on, they targeted me with a particular enthusiasm, as if I reminded them of a hated schoolteacher. The other cellmates moved around us in private orbits, each in a different struggle. Even as this life became familiar, waking and queuing and lingering in the prison library, every day brought new terrors. Just after lunch, a guard appears; he calls a name; the prisoner shuffles outside. Minutes later we hear his thin screams. Strong, thin screams, like sheets of glass. Sometimes the prisoner does not return. In a way this was easier than when he did come back, stooped and hobbling, to lie on the planks. This reminder that we were all peers, growing hollower every morning.

  In one of our early interactions, I tried denying Fyodor’s request for food. Suddenly Ears was showing me a knife. It was an unusual weapon, long and bevelled; it was the kind of object that belongs in a particular workshop, fulfilling a particular function, the tool of a tanner or a woodworker or a bookbinder. In this place it was a blade in a young man’s hand. He drew it along my arm, tearing the fabric of my sleeve, nothing more. Fyodor reached for my bowl. “Thanks, Lev,” he said. He patted me on the cheek.

  Our cell had at least four or five mu
sicians, a doctor, an official I recognized vaguely from the newspaper. There was an acrobat. There was a fortune-teller, an old man who would close his lids and touch the space between your eyes and tell you that you were going to die. Besides Ears and Fyodor, the cell also had other young criminals; they had more or less divided up the prey. Order was maintained by the Rebbe, a Jew and former wrestler, jailed for the murder of his wife’s lover. He was a huge, serious man, a little older than me. Through violence or consensus he had become the authority. Whenever Fyodor and Ears claimed their tithe, I saw them glance back through the crowd to where the Rebbe sat watching, near the bright, barred window.

  MARKEVICH WAS SMALL AND QUIET; he kept to himself. Like me he was a political prisoner—a former accountant who had done too much work in imports. One day, Fyodor decided that Markevich was an informer. Something had happened to one of Fyodor’s friends, a lunkhead with the habit of tearing pages out of library books; he was taken away and didn’t come back. The criminals had friends among the guards; they said the paper ripper had been transferred to another prison. Fyodor was furious. He was certain someone had squealed about tattered dictionaries, shredded Pushkin. He blamed Markevich, from whom the goon had once snatched a book. It was arbitrary and petty. I know now that it also betrayed Fyodor’s naiveté: we might all be transferred to other prisons, before long. But Fyodor raged, hissing at Markevich, threatening him, stealing his shoes at the showers. “Leave off,” I said finally, at once regretting it.

  Fyodor pivoted toward me, eyebrows raised. “Oh yes, Lev? What’s that? Have some advice? Some helpful advice?”

  I shrugged and turned away, but it was too late: now Markevich and I were united in Fyodor’s eyes. I went to a corner, slid down with my back to the wall. Then Fyodor was standing at my toes. He was angry, jumpy. Ears hovered behind him.

  “So you’re a rat too, friend?”

  “No,” I said patiently. Fyodor reached down and slammed the back of my head into the brick. I heard a clunk and the room skewed. For one white moment I wanted to vomit. Then I was swallowing and breathing slowly and looking into Fyodor’s pupils. He was smiling. He ruffled my hair. He sauntered away. My vision fogged with tears but across the cell I saw the Rebbe, watching.

  So now Fyodor and Ears sat on their bunks and spat at me, spat at Markevich. Someone threw a piece of shit at me in the night. Every morning they crouched beside me, claimed my food. It was even worse for Markevich; they regularly shoved him around, bloodied his face. Gradually everything outside our little drama seemed to disappear. It was as if the cell had become smaller, closer, like a tunnel. I saw Fyodor, Ears, Markevich; I imagined and anticipated them. I held a book in my hands, reading and rereading the same page, distracted by a shrill fear like a ringing in my ears. I did not believe that these boys would do something horrific to me, just that they would do something small and terrible. I dreamed of soldiers, burying me alive.

  It was late afternoon when the key clicked in the lock and a guard heaved the cell door open. “Fyodor Solovyov,” he shouted. Fyodor’s head jerked up. He rose. His face looked as though it hadn’t sorted out which expression to use. He shook hands with Ears and wove his way to the door, disappearing. It was from watching Ears, left behind, that I understood this was not a scheduled rendezvous. Ears was nervous. He sat on a bunk, holding his hands. I lowered my eyes to a book about fishing. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, sad. My life in New York had disappeared so easily, replaced with these two things: a book about fishing and the short story of two teenaged thugs. Sometimes it is just strength, I said to myself. The only answer is persistence. I looked at Ears. I looked at my book.

  Fyodor did not return until the next day. I was not there for his arrival. I came back from the library and found him sitting on his bunk, shrunken somehow, reduced. His face seemed emptied out, with bruises on his temples. There were marks on his hands. He noticed me and raised his eyes, and I saw an unexpected, terrible hatred. I saw fury. His face flashed pink and he lowered his gaze. I went to my spot on the floor and sat, encircling my knees with my arms. I had lost interest in my book. Fyodor and Ears were murmuring to each other, just out of view. Markevich stood in a far corner, watching. I was all alone in a Moscow prison. Was Eva Emilievna in a nearby cell, I wondered. Had she been arrested in Leningrad, hauled from her apartment, brought by a Black Maria to an interrogation cell? Who is Lev Sergeyvich? Tell us about him. Did she have enough to eat? Had she been hurt?

  The evening meal passed undisturbed. Before lights-out, Fyodor appeared beside me. He crouched so silently. He ran his index finger over his lower lip. “I am going to kill you, Lyova,” he whispered.

  I turned to him abruptly. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I kill rats,” he said. “You think you will go on betraying your cellmates? Cowering behind your books?” He snickered. “I kill rats.”

  I swallowed. “I am not a rat.”

  “When you are being beaten,” Fyodor explained, silken, “there is a lot of time to consider who told who what. There is a lot of time to consider who might lie about you to the guards, who might want to lie, which zeks in their nice shirts—”

  “Why would I speak to them?”

  Fyodor did not like being interrupted. His lips went white. I imagined Ears in the shadows, drawing his knife. “There is a lot of time to remember the old man who is always coming and going from the cell, prim and swaggering.”

  “What about Markevich?” I said, because I am a wretched human being.

  “Not this time,” he murmured. “I know, Lev. I know, you shit, and I will kill you in your sleep.”

  I did not sleep. All night I listened to the breath and groans and snoring. I smelled the exhalations of imprisoned men. I lay on my back, fists clenched, staring at the hideous blue light bulb, aware of every movement, every voice. There was shouting, far away, through the walls, and men crying. There was wind in the grate, sewer scents. A man rose and urinated into the latrine beside me. Fyodor was motionless in his bunk. I wondered if he had changed his mind.

  Men began to stir before dawn, anticipating the competition for the shower. The patrolling guards began their reveille. I crowded with the others by the door, furtive. Fyodor had rolled to sitting. I saw him go over to Ears. For a moment I had the instinct to go over there, to explain myself, to say that I was no informer, just a scientist, a patriot, that I wished them only well. I did not go over. I watched as Ears and Fyodor began to argue, muttering with lowered voices. Fyodor marked his knee with the side of his hand. Ears shook his head. Fyodor became more and more forceful. “Fyodor,” I heard Ears say, balefully. “Come on, Fyodor.”

  The guards took us away to the showers.

  Fyodor made his move at breakfast. I was sitting stooped over some gruel, my back to where the guards made tea. I heard a sound behind me. I turned. Fyodor was holding a pot of boiling water. The first drops landed scalding on my ear as I swivelled, tore upward, knocking him away. The pot fell, spilling steam and scorching our toes and Fyodor roared forward, wild-eyed, with clawing hands. He was not a fighter. I shoved his arms aside, punched him hard in the side. He wheeled and came at me again. He swung. I ducked. His huge hand grabbed my shoulder and I kneed him hard in the solar plexus, shoved him again. He slipped on his heel, fell, struck his head on a concrete block. His eyes rolled. There was blood.

  Where were the guards? I do not know. Why did no one stop us? Because we were all fearful of consequences. But everyone was watching when I killed Fyodor Solovyov. The Rebbe was watching. I was thinking: My second murder is not unlike my first. Blood is blood. It pushed into the steaming water.

  The crowd parted and the Rebbe stood beside me, the giant former wrestler. He blew out his cheeks. He gave me a very level look, a serious man’s look, and he kneeled and touched Fyodor’s face, felt for a pulse.

  “Get out of here,” he said finally, without turning.

  I took two steps backward, into the crowd.

  The Rebbe s
tood, bent, grabbed the shoulder of Fyodor’s coat, dragged him across the red spray and against the wall. He straightened to assess us.

  He said, “The boy slipped on the water.”

  I WAS NOT BOTHERED again during my time at Butyrka.

  The guards did not question me. Of course they did not: Markevich, our informer, did not inform.

  One quiet morning, Ears sat down beside me and asked if I played chess. He had a set, made of dried pieces of bread.

  Prisoners must cultivate short memories.

  ON THE FIFTEENTH OF AUGUST, I was brought into an office and sentenced to eight years in a corrective labour camp.

  Eight years, Clara.