Libra - Don Delillo [73]
Oswald gave a half-smile.
“Committee for State Security. We believe you’ve been trying to contact us in your own way. Not fully knowing how perhaps. You understand we’re wary of all attempts to contact us. A nervous habit. With luck we’ll get over it someday.”
Kirilenko had light blue eyes, silvery stubble, the beginning of a sag to his lower jaw. He was stocky and wheezed a little. There was a slyness about him that Oswald took to be an aspect of friendliness. He seemed to be talking to himself half the time the way a middle-aged man might drift lightly through a dialogue with a child, to amuse himself as much as the boy or girl.
“Tell me. How do you feel?”
“Some diarrhea for a while.”
Nodding. “Are you happy to be here? Or it was all a mistake. You want to go home.”
“I feel fine now. Very happy. It’s all cleared up.”
“And you want to stay if this is what I understand.”
“To be a citizen of your country.”
“You have friends here.”
“No one.”
“There is your family in America.”
“Just a mother.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t wish to ever contact her again.”
“Sisters and brothers.”
“They don’t understand the reasons for my actions. Two brothers. ”
“A wife. You are married.”
“No marriages, no children.”
The man leaned still closer.
“Girlfriends. A young woman, you lie in bed and think of her.”
“I left nothing behind. I had no quarrels with anyone.”
“Tell me. Why did you cut your wrist?”
“Because of disappointment. They wouldn’t let me stay.”
Nodding. “Did you feel, in all seriousness, you were dying? I’m rather curious to know, personally.”
“I wanted to let someone else decide. It was out of my hands.”
Nodding, eyelids falling shut. “You have funds, or they will send funds from home?”
“I am down to almost nothing.”
“Good warm clothes. You have boots?”
“It’s a question of being allowed to stay. I’m ready to work. I have special training.”
Kirilenko seemed to let that pass.
“Where would you work? Who would give you work?”
“I was hoping the state. I am willing to do whatever necessary. Work and study. I would like to study.”
“Do you believe, I wonder, in God?”
“No. ”
Smiling. “Not even a little? For my personal information.”
“I consider it total superstition. People build their lives around this falsehood.”
“On your passport, why do I have the impression you crossed out the name of your hometown?”
“It’s completely behind me was the reason for doing that. Plus I didn’t want them contacting relatives. Which the press did anyway. But I didn’t take their phone calls or answer their telegrams.”
“Why did you tell your embassy you would reveal military secrets?”
“I wanted to make it so they had to accept my renouncing my citizenship.”
“Did they accept?”
“They said it’s a Saturday and they close early.”
“Your unlucky day.”
“They said, ‘Come back and we’ll do what we can.’ ”
“I think I’m enjoying this talk.”
“I didn’t give them the satisfaction of reappearing. I wrote them my position instead.”
“And these secrets, which you’ve carried all this way.”
“I was in Atsugi.”
Nodding.
“Which is a closed base in Japan.”
“We’ll talk further. I wonder, though, if these secrets become completely useless once you announce your intention to reveal them.”
This last remark was delivered directly to the other KGB man, who leaned against the window frame smoking. Kirilenko made it sound like a scholarly aside. He leaned close to Oswald once more.
“Tell me. The scar is healing well?”
“Yes.”
“You can stand the cold? The cold isn’t too ridiculous?”
“I’m getting used to it.”
“The food. You eat the food they serve here? Not so bad, is it?”
“It’s only the hospital food that wasn’t good. Like any hospital.”
He looked down to see if his pajamas were sticking out of his trousers. He was wearing his pajama bottoms under his suit pants because he’d hurried to answer the knock at the door.
“What about the Russian people? I’m personally curious to hear what you think of us.”
Lee cleared his throat to answer the question. The question made him happy. He’d anticipated being asked, sooner