The Red House

If I were a man, Zhukov thought, I’d reply, ‘But you’re only a third secretary.’ But you had to be smart with not saying words as well as saying them.

The city was slowly on the move, the snow like the fuzz the morning after too much Stolichnaya.

A Buick fanning wings of slush hove past bearing the legend ‘Save Soviet Jewry.’

From what? Ah, diplomacy …

A street sign said Tow Away Zone. Another said Snow Emergency Street. They turned into East 67th Street. No. 136—The Mission of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the United Nations. And those of Ukraine and Byelorussia. And, across the road, down the street from the red-brick 19th police precinct clubhouse a synagogue.

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BUT the spirit of good will and New Year’s resolution hadn’t penetrated the pale and clinical building at 136.

In the foyer Zhukov’s body turned clammy in the artificial heat. A woman with greying hair forced into a bun, and a lackey in a miserable suit and thin tie regarded him suspiciously. A plastic Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden beamed in the corner in spite of it all.

‘We shall stay here until they open Washington Airport,’ Grigorenko said. ‘You would perhaps like to get some sleep?’

‘I’d like to have a look at New York while I’m here,’ Zhukov said.

‘It would be better if you got some sleep.’

‘I should like to see New York. It might be my only chance.’

Valentina sided with Grigorenko. ‘I’m very tired, Vladimir.’

You couldn’t make a scene within minutes of arrival; nor could you relinquish all authority to a couple of third secretaries protected by the ghost of Beria. ‘Perhaps later,’ Zhukov said.

Outside they heard scuffling. Russian oaths involving mothers. A voice with a Uzbek accent screaming ‘Samarsky!’

The door sprang open. A blast of cold air followed by a young man held by two squat captors. They pinioned him easily, his feet just touching the ground. His hair was black and curly, badly cut; his skin dark, his body slight and struggling.

Grigorenko strode across to them and growled as softly as he could, showing the squatter of the two an identification card.

Grigorenko spoke to the young man.

‘Go and fuck yourself,’ screamed the young man. His dark face was frenzied with fear—a man being carried to the hangman’s noose.

Grigorenko nodded slowly, as if abrupt movement might dislocate the big head from his neck. ‘Put him down.’ The hunters released their quarry. ‘You haven’t made a very good start on the New Year,’ he observed.

‘Shit on you,’ said the prisoner.

Grigorenko stepped forward kicking hard and down the shin, crunching on the instep, bringing his knee up into the crotch as the man gasped forward, finally rabbit-punching the side of the neck with the blade of his hand.

The young man, doubled over in pain, was carried away.

‘Tomorrow,’ Grigorenko said, ‘he will be on the plane to Moscow.’

‘And what was that all about?’ Zhukov asked.

‘It’s nothing for you to worry about,’ Grigorenko replied.

Brodsky, who’d been watching with his inhaler held up one nostril, said, ‘Just another drunk, probably. They will insist on drinking Scotch when they’re used to vodka.’

‘That man wasn’t drunk.’

‘It affects different people in different ways.’

‘And now,’ Grigorenko announced, ‘it’s time for bed.’

He was, Zhukov thought, very avuncular. As avuncular as Stalin.

Only Grandfather Frost who had once been on the receiving end of denunciation—a puppet of the priests, no less!—saw any humour in the situation.

He allotted himself two hours’ sleep and lay down on one of the two single beds in the small bedroom. A bowl of fruit and a picture of Lenin dominated the decor.

He listened to his rapid vodka heartbeat and told himself to calm down about everything. About the priorities shifting around in his mind. About the tests of loyalty ahead.

Although I am a good citizen, Vladimir Zhukov assured himself. A good Party member. I believe in our crusade. His trained brain recited, unsolicited: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ The last lecture in Moscow surfaced. ‘We know that an accelerating, unmanageable national debt will effect civil collapse and open the floodgates of Socialism.’ The lecturer’s fanatic face peered closer. ‘This is now happening in the United States of America. It is up to you …’

They had observed him over the past five years and he had passed their surveillance. Not for them to penetrate the secret sensibilities that are a man’s soul. The coil of poetry unsprung. Not for them to glimpse the doubts on which true strength is founded.

He lapsed into an excited doze, limbs twitching, eyelids quivering. Yellow cabs vanishing down narrowing vistas of skyscrapers, Manhattan a mirage behind a veil of snow. When he awoke he was confused about reality: he had dreamed so often about this arrival in a celluloid city projected on his private grey screen.

He climbed out of bed carefully, still in his underwear. It was exactly two hours: such damned precision. His wife slept serenely. Through a slit in the curtain he looked down on the synagogue, on the blue cap of a guardian cop.

In the bathroom down the corridor he shaved, drawing blood from his tired skin. He pressed his eyelids and his eyes ached back at him. He massaged a little pomade into his sleek hair and watched the wires of silver fade. He returned to the bedroom.

Valentina said, ‘Where are you going, Vladimir?’

‘I thought I’d take a stroll. I can’t sleep.’

‘You mean you’ve stopped yourself from sleeping.’ She knew him so well.

‘I may never see New York again.’

‘They don’t want you to go out alone, Vladimir. You know that. Why defy them on our first morning in America?’

‘I’m not their slave, Valentina.’

‘Don’t be foolish—remember how you’ve worked for this day.’ She sat up in bed, hair loose, the brown aureoles of her nipples visible through white cotton; in her waking moments she was more feminine than she cared to be.

‘A servant, maybe. But, I repeat, not a slave. I must assert some authority now before it’s too late.’

‘Come and lie down with me.’ She stretched out warm arms.

Vladimir Zhukov silently apologized to his wife for rejecting her comforts and put on his new dark-grey suit with the wide trouser bottoms which Western fashion was beginning to acknowledge. Except that with his trousers the width extended to the thigh.

Valentina said, ‘If you insist, then I shall come with you.’