Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

My computer was sitting on the windowsill. “Here, I’ll do this,” Yulia said about the food. “Have a look.”

I did as I was told. There really were a bunch of articles about the American academic arrested by the despotic regime. On Facebook everyone was asking after my well-being, even Fishman. It made me sound like a brave martyr, which I found embarrassing. Maybe this was what Yulia was mad about. If I was such a brave martyr, why had the police let me go so easily, and with such pleasant smiles?

Then my phone rang. It was my adviser.

“Are you out?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I just got home.”

“OK, great. Jesus, you gave us a scare. Listen. I got the strangest call from Phil Nelson just now. He saw the news coverage and was asking about you. He even suggested there might be a line for you in the reconstituted GSLLD.” That’s what my adviser had taken to calling the Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. A “line” was a job.

“Wow,” I said. “Why—why would he do that?”

“Who knows. I mean, Columbia just made some splashy hires. And you know Phil. He loves hugging babies and releasing prisoners. And our finances haven’t taken quite as much of a hit as they should have, I think. We might even get some of that Obama stimulus money. Anyway, when he called asking about you I told him you had a big article coming out in the Slavic Review and that you should have gotten the Watson job. So, heads up. If he calls with an offer, make sure he’s talking about a genuine line, not a visiting appointment. And ask him about housing.”

“Seriously?”

Housing was a subsidized apartment. They weren’t luxury apartments but they were spacious and they were in Manhattan; in fact it was about as close to socialism as you got in New York.

“Yeah, why the hell not,” said my adviser. “If he wants to hire you to get some publicity, make him really hire you. OK?”

“OK,” I said. “Thank you.”

I had walked out of the kitchen as I talked with my adviser and now I came back in. Yulia was sitting with my grandmother and holding her hand. “You see,” my grandmother was saying, “all my friends have died. All my relatives have died. Everyone is dead except me. What’s the point?”

“I know, Seva Efraimovna,” Yulia said. “I know.”

When I came in she looked up at me with a question on her face, as if to say, “Who was that on the phone?”

I shrugged, as if to say, “It wasn’t anyone important. It was a wrong number. It was nothing.”

I really did feel like it wasn’t worth getting into, given that it could well end up being nothing, like the Watson job. My adviser had a pretty good sense of these things, but President Nelson was a guy who frequently changed his mind.

“Who was that on the phone, Andryush?” my grandmother asked.

“No one,” I said. “A friend from America.”

“Ah, America,” my grandmother said. “I went there once. I didn’t like it.”

“And you were right, Seva Efraimovna, you were right,” Yulia said. Then she stood up and, to my surprise, brought her lips to my grandmother’s forehead. “Thank you for everything, Seva Efraimovna,” she said. “Thank you for taking me into your home. I am very grateful to you. Stay strong.”

My grandmother didn’t understand where this was coming from but she loved to be touched, and she laughed happily. “Thank you,” she said to Yulia, who was now heading for the front hall. But it sounded to me like Yulia was saying good-bye to my grandmother.

I followed her into the front hall.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Nothing’s going on,” she said coldly.

“Why did you just say good-bye to my grandmother?”

“I don’t know that I’ll see her again.”

“Why not?” I said, and then repeated: “What’s going on?”

Still without betraying any emotion, she answered my question with a question. “What did you tell the police?”

“Nothing! I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know!”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“Like what?”

“They were nice to you and pretended to think what you said was interesting, right? And you talked and talked. Yes?”

That was approximately what had happened. My silence now confirmed it.

“Oh, Andryush. You haven’t learned anything about this place, have you? You’re still such an American. You still believe in words.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I said. “What else am I supposed to believe in?”

“Who was that on the phone just now?” Yulia said.

“My adviser.” In Russian the word is longer— nauchny rukovoditel’ , academic supervisor, or nauchruk . “ Nauchruk ,” I said.

“And did he tell you they have a job for you now?” Yulia asked.

“He said maybe, yes,” I said.

“I knew it,” said Yulia, half to herself.

“I’m not going to take it,” I said. “If it even exists.”

“No, Andryush. You will take it.”

“Yul’,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll see. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But I’m probably not wrong.

“Good-bye, Andrei.”

She kissed me on the cheek, not on the mouth, sort of like she’d kissed me on the cheek when I came into Sergei’s party, but in reverse. It seemed like years had passed since then.

She opened the door and left. I let her. I was angry and confused. But I was also worried that she was right.

It was eight o’clock now, I still had time to go to hockey, but I didn’t feel like it. I cleared our plates and played a couple of games of anagrams with my grandmother. Then I answered as many of the emails and messages I’d received as I could. All of it left me feeling uneasy; something had happened back there, and I still didn’t know what it was.

The next morning, a Saturday, they arrested Sergei and Misha and charged them with “extremism.” I heard about it from Boris, who called to ask if I knew anything.

“ Blyad’ ,” I said. “Could it have been because of me? Because of something I said?”

“I don’t know,” Boris said coldly. “I have no idea what you said or didn’t say. So the answer is: I don’t know.”

I tried Yulia. She didn’t answer. I kept trying her and she still didn’t answer. Finally I got dressed and went outside and took a car to her place. I called up to their apartment and Katya answered.

“Yulia doesn’t want to see you,” she said.

“But she’s there?”

“Yes, she’s here.”

I asked her if she knew about the arrests, and she said she did.

And that was it. I tried Nikolai, whose phone seemed to be off. I called Boris again and asked if he had any news about Nikolai or anyone else; he said he didn’t and also that he didn’t think we should be talking on the phone. I told him I was near Mayakovskaya and asked if he wanted to meet up, and he said no, he didn’t, as if I were some kind of spy.

I walked down to Patriarch Ponds and sat on one of the benches. This was one of the beautiful spots of Moscow; a small pond inside a small park, with benches and a walkway shaded with old trees, and then all around some old, mostly non-ugly buildings from early in the twentieth century. Yulia and I had come here a few times once the weather was nice enough. There were seldom any really drunk people causing a ruckus here.

Now it felt useless and sterile and sour. Because of me, two good friends were in jail, and Yulia wouldn’t see me, and even ice-cold, robotic Boris was mad. I felt both wrong and wronged.

I called Anton, from hockey, and asked if he could meet me. Anton may have been a tax attorney, but that was the closest thing to an attorney I knew. He was at his office, nearby, and half an hour later he met me at the Starlite Diner. I told him what had happened. He didn’t blame me, but he was upset. “We need to tell the guys,” he said. “That’s our goddamn goalie.”