Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

I paid for our tea and cakes.

The next day I ironed my suit and went back to the Kremlin. I passed through red-brick Spasskaya Tower and to the entrance of the senate. At reception I said in a quiet voice that I was the scientist Lev Sergeyvich Termen, from Leningrad, and that I wished to have a meeting with First Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. In my message to the first marshal I said that we had met ten years ago, when I had shown him how to see through walls.

I thanked the secretary and sat down and waited.

When visitors’ hours ended that night, I returned to the Dnepr Hotel. In the morning I ironed my suit and went back to Spasskaya Tower. I passed through security and crossed the stone streets, past patrolling guards, birds in chirruping oaks, and arrived at the senate. I told the secretary I was the scientist Lev Sergeyvich Termen, from Leningrad, and again I was here to see First Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. I sat down and I waited.

Just as it was turning dark on the other side of the glass, an officer in shoulder boards appeared beside me.

“Comrade Termen?” he said.

He took me upstairs.

I passed through seven sets of closed doors. They checked my identification three times. In all my meetings with military leaders, my meeting with Lenin himself, I had not undergone so much scrutiny. Men surveyed me with faces like attack dogs. The corridors leading to Voroshilov’s office were bizarrely arrayed: oil portraits of horses, brown and black, like a parade of derby winners. Although there were also painted cavalrymen, the humans seemed like servants: men-in-waiting, holding the bridles of their leaders.

Finally they led me into a room that was three or four times the size of Eva’s apartment, filled with paintings of Iosif Vissarionovich, Voroshilov, Iosif Vissarionovich walking with Voroshilov, and a dozen life-size canvases of Arabians, Tersks, Tchernomor horses. I recognized Voroshilov and immediately felt a sinking feeling. This was the general who had seemed most ambivalent to my research. He had a round face and platinum hair, a moustache like a smear of charcoal dust. His chest was full of medals. His eyes were too near together.

Voroshilov sat. I stood. Between us rested the bronze sculpture of a horse. His desk did not even have a pad of paper: just a single lined sheet, and I could see no pen. Perhaps Voroshilov carried a pen in his pocket, with his military whistle.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said.

He said, “You are the doctor?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The doctor from Leningrad.”

“My name is Lev Sergeyvich Termen. I am a scientist. Yes, from Leningrad. Thank you for meeting with me, Comrade Voroshilov.”

“I only have a moment to see you,” he said. He did not seem to blink except when other people were talking.

“I know you are very busy. I will try not to take up much of your time.” I clasped my hands.

“What is this about?”

“We met ten years ago, when I made a presentation on distance vision.”

“Yes?”

I hesitated. I was not sure if he remembered me or not. “So … I — since then, I have continued my research in other fields. This brought me to Germany, to France, to England, to America …”

He had his eyebrows high, his lips dead flat.

“In New York I collaborated with the NKVD, collecting intelligence for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” I said. It was the first time I had ever said such a thing.

“For Beria?” he snapped.

“Who?”

“Comrade Beria.”

“No, I worked — for other officers. Now I have returned to the Soviet Union and I am seeking a new project.”

“So?”

“So …” I began.

“Do you think I am in need of doctors?” he said.

“No, I am a scientist and I thought that as you had—”

“You thought you would come here and dream up some kind of scheme? A swap of favours?”

“What? No! I’m looking for work and—”

“You’d line up and murmur the NKVD’s name and abracadabra, some magic powder floats down from the sky—”

“No!” My fingertips fell against the edge of Voroshilov’s desk. I had interrupted him. He showed his teeth.

“Comrade, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is built on systems. These are plain, practical systems. Sometimes these systems are so plain that they appear ugly. But they are not ugly. They are the most beautiful systems in the world and they function only if the people abide by these systems. Work is the most basic thing. It is the bedrock. If you try to bypass the systems, to exploit some influence in your own self-interest, it is as if you are taking a chisel to the bedrock of the Revolution.”

There was a long pause. I said nothing until I realized that he was waiting for me to say something. “Yes, of course,” I murmured.

“You say ‘of course’ as if you were not trying to corrupt the very foundation of the Soviet system,” Voroshilov said.

“No, no, I just hoped that—”

“You may go,” he said.

“Comrade Voroshilov, I am deeply devoted to the—”

“It is all right; we all make mistakes. Glaunov — show the doctor out.”

A man took me by the elbow and then I was outside Voroshilov’s office, off-balance among the stallions. “Was he angry?” I said to his assistant.

“What?”

“Was he angry just now?”

“Who?”

“Voroshilov!”

“Oh, no. No.”

“Thank you,” I said. I fumbled at the buttons of my suit. “Thank you,” I repeated.

I left the Kremlin and walked along the water. The air was clear and brisk. Night had fallen and I found that I was wandering in straight lines: the path by the river, then across the bridge, and back, and for miles along a road. I passed a silvery concert hall as a children’s orchestra streamed out of its doors: boys and girls hauling violins and trumpets and double basses wrapped in cloths. Parents’ hands rested on their children’s shoulders.

The moon was almost full. The city’s glass reflections looked like flashing signals.

I was irritated with Voroshilov but I was more irritated with myself: that I had done no research, that I was so ill-prepared. I was very hungry but in that state of mind where one cannot decide what to eat. I left the river and passed among stalls selling sandwiches, pelmeni, shashlyk . Finally, I ducked into a late-night café for a bowl of soup, some bread. I sipped from the bowl. I remember the soup was very peppery. I remember I was wondering whether I should try to meet with the other marshal, Budennyj. I turned this question over in my head.

The waiter asked me if I wanted a piece of apple cake with cream. I shook my head. I did not even say the word no. How many thousands of times did I revisit that moment and wish I had said yes. How many thousands of times did I long for a piece of apple cake with cream.

I went back to the hotel. I read from a novel about flying in a rocket to the stars. I never finished this book.

I went to sleep on the bed.

In the middle of the night, as is their way, there came a knock at the door.

BUTYRSKAYA WAS MY FIRST PRISON. It was not the worst. I began to tremble as the car approached its gate: uncontrollably, as if I was having a seizure. The guard beside me did nothing. He rode with his truncheon on his lap. I held my jumping hands to my face and tried to slow my breathing, but my heart kept on skipping in my chest like a piece of gravel.

We stopped and someone got out to open the door. I asked the guard again: “What have I done?”

They ordered me out and into a line of other prisoners. The bricks shone in the moonlight. None of us spoke. We searched each other’s faces, fearful. Guards yelled commands, cars arrived and sped away, engines shrieked. The prison door creaked open and closed, like the jaws of a trap. From far away it is difficult to write of these things: everything sounds like an exaggeration, a story you have already heard. But I had not heard these stories. I stood in the night, trembling. I did not know it was Butyrskaya. I did not know the names of Moscow prisons. The windows were covered with sheet metal and the bricks were the shade of dried blood. The trap creaked open. A man told me to go inside.