Libra - Don Delillo [94]
Interesting, Marina thought, how much writing he seems to do on those large new pads. What are those photographs he keeps on the top shelf of the closet, behind the suitcases? What is this pencil sketch that looks like a ground plan of the radio factory?
He told her he was writing his impressions of Russia.
And what is that thing on the wall, the little fixture near the sofa bed that seems to have no earthly use? Is someone listening to what we say?
Even now, after Stalin, she wasn’t sure who to trust. Her own uncle Ilya was a colonel in the MVD. In his uniform he was like a painted hero of the Great Patriotic War. Alek wanted her to find out everything she could about Ilya’s rank, his salary, his duties. She knew his position had something to do with the timber industry. A sensitive post but not at all related to spies or counterspies. He was Head of Timber or something similar. That was her impression.
Alek told her to find out more. It was for the sketches he was writing of Russia.
Sometimes Alek rented a boat alone and let it drift along the river past their building. He would shout her name, call repeatedly into the wind until she appeared on the balcony to wave. His return wave was like a child’s, a deep and excited delight. He seemed in his little boat to say, “Look at us, a miracle, so true and sure.”
Two years earlier, on a vacation trip to Minsk when she lived in Leningrad, Marina had noticed a handsome apartment house with balconies overlooking the river. One terrace was bright with flowers and she’d imagined how lovely it would be to live there. She was certain this was the balcony she stood on now, hers and Alek’s, waving, as the boat moved slowly past.
Destiny is larger than facts or events. It is something to believe in outside the ordinary borders of the senses, with God so distant from our lives.
Some people don’t believe in God but they color eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.
Postcard #5. A foldout number. “Scenes of Minsk.” Oswald is photographed at the Victory Monument, the Palace of Culture, Stalin Square. He is a cheerful enough subject, smiling squarely at the camera, but in fact there is little to be happy about right now.
His application to study at the Patrice Lumumba University of the Friendship of Nations has been turned down. He takes the news hard. It makes him feel small and worthless. The Chief of Student Welcoming writes that the school was created exclusively for youths of the underprivileged countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Lee wonders how they can think he is privileged. It is part of the general stupidity about life in the U.S.
What else? Well, he has written to the U.S. embassy in Moscow to ask for his passport back. He’s a little nervous about this, considering he dumped the passport in their lap, practically forced them to take it, and then said some things he wishes he hadn’t about military secrets. Would they want to prosecute him if he returned?
What else? There’s this funny little device on the wall of his flat and it’s not a socket, a light switch or a thing to hang a picture from. Not only that. He keeps seeing a car marked “Driving School” going up and down his street. Maybe his street is the site of the final exam, he thinks, except there is never a student in the car.
He believes they are watching him because they think he is a false defector sent by the Office of Naval Intelligence. He easily sees the possibility that ONI is waiting to get him out of here so he can tell them what he’s learned.
He knows someone is intercepting his mail because right after he wrote to the U.S. embassy, his monthly payments from the so-called Red Cross suddenly disappeared, cutting his income in half. He took the money in the first place because he was hungry and broke and there was snow on the ground in Moscow. He didn’t want to think about the true