Sashenka

Without even thinking, Gideon bowed his head and whispered the Kaddish for his brother, amazed he could even recall that old Jewish prayer for the dead…Facing death, one returns to childhood, to family. Gideon realized that he loved his daughter Mouche more than anyone in the world. Will Mouche understand me, remember me, after I get the seven grams in the back of the neck? he wondered. The pain in his chest was unbearable. He was almost weeping with fear.

“Here we are!” The young man smiled at Gideon. He did not treat Gideon like a prisoner. On the contrary, a uniformed Chekist—as all secret policemen were known, in honor of Lenin’s “knights of the Revolution,” the Cheka—opened the door and helped him out of the car. Well, I am a literary celebrity, Gideon thought, reviving a little. There was no tonic like fame.

He noticed the many Buicks and ZiSes parked there. This was not the courtyard where they brought new prisoners.

Gideon was guided through double wooden doors into a marble hall and then a wood-paneled corridor with a blue carpet runner along the middle. Officers in NKVD uniform, and secretaries, bustled about. It was like any other state office. Gideon was relieved they were not taking him to the Internal Prison but he kept searching his mind for the meaning of this summons. What had he written recently? What had he said? What was happening in Europe that could involve him? He was a Jew and they had just sacked Litvinov, the Foreign Commissar, and also a Jew. Were Jews going out of favor? Was the USSR moving closer to Hitler?

If I am going to die, have I fucked enough women? Gideon thought suddenly. Never enough! Heartburn pierced his chest and he gasped.

“This is my office,” said the young man, his pompadoured hair rising in a perfectly formed wave over his pink forehead. “I’m Investigator Mogilchuk of the Serious Cases Section, State Security. Are you all right? Here!” He offered Gideon a pillbox. “Nitroglycerin? You see, I was expecting you.”

Gideon swallowed two pills, and the pain in his chest diminished.

A busty freckled redhead with a slit up the side of her dress sat typing in the anteroom. Even here his mind wandered up her skirt for that delicious first touch of the new…There were flowers on her desk. She took Gideon’s hat.

“Come on in, Gideon Moiseievich,” said Investigator Mogilchuk, clean-cut and young. When they were sitting down, the freckled girl brought tea for both of them and shut the door.

“Thanks for coming in, Citizen Zeitlin,” Mogilchuk started, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. Gideon could smell the coconut sweetness of that damned pomade in the youth’s red hair. “I shall take notes. By the way, have you seen Romm’s new movie, Lenin in 1918? As a young fan of your writing, I just wondered what you thought of it?”

Gideon virtually spat out his tea: had these ideeeots terrified him in order to bring him here just for a chat on movies? No, of course they had not. Ever since the twenties, the Cheka had used sophisticated faux intellectuals to manage the real ones. This freckly youth was merely the latest in a long line.

“Lenin in 1918 is a wonderful film, and Stalin is beautifully portrayed in contrast to the murderous terrorist Bukharin,” he replied.

“You know Romm of course. And how about Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky?”

“Eisenstein is a sublime artist and a friend. The movie shows us how Bolshevism is utterly compatible with the Russian nation and its stand against our national enemies.”

“Interesting,” said the interrogator sincerely, stroking his ginger mustache. “I must tell you I’m a writer myself. You may have read my collection of detective stories published under the name M. Sluzhba? One of them will soon be performed as a play at the Art Theater.”

“Ah yes,” said Gideon, who vaguely remembered a review of a volume of clichéd detective yarns by a certain Sluzhba in some thick journal. “I thought those tales had the tang of reality about them.”

Mogilchuk smiled toothily. “You flatter me! Thank you, Gideon Moiseievich, from you that’s a compliment. I would welcome any comments.” He passed his hand over the papers before him but did not change his tone. “Now let me start by showing you these.” He pushed a bound wad of papers toward Gideon.

“What are these?” Gideon’s confidence sank again.

“Just some of the confessions of your intimate friends in the last couple of years.”

Gideon surveyed the typed-up pages on special headed NKVD letterhead, each one signed in the corner.

“You’re a big name and you appear frequently in these confessions,” explained the youngster keenly, almost admiringly. “They all mention you. Look here in these Protocols of Interrogation, and see there!”