Libra - Don Delillo [95]
No sign of Alek. Not a word. Total silence.
Maybe this is all Alek. It is everything Alek. It is get the goods on him. It is pin him to the wall when all I want to do is study.
I still haden’t told my wife of my desire to return to US.
His friend Erich introduces him to some Cuban students and he likes talking to them, likes exchanging complaints about the dreariness of Minsk. The Cubans have a talent and a flair. There is an integrity in the Cuban cause, he believes. It is an underdog effort. Here, people use the party to get ahead. The party is an instrument of material gain.
He is photographed one more time, wearing dark glasses.
Near his building was a five-hundred-foot radio tower enclosed in barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards with the usual snarling dogs. Not far away were two smaller structures, just as well guarded. These were jamming towers, designed to interfere with high-frequency broadcasts,from Munich and other Western cities.
He saw himself writing this story for Life or Look, the tale of an ex-Marine who has penetrated the heart of the Soviet Union, observing everyday life, seeing how fear rules the country. Chocolate is four times more expensive than in the U.S. No choice, however small, is left to the discretion of the individual.
He has taken photographs of the airport, the polytechnic institute and an army office building, just to have, to save for later.
“A strange sight indeed,” he would write, “is the picture of the local party man delivering a political sermon to a group of robust simple working men who through some strange process have been turned to stone. Turned to stone all except the hard faced communists with roving eyes looking for any bonus-making catch of inattentiveness on the part of any worker.”
He saw himself in the reception room at Life or Look, his manuscript in a leather folder in his lap. What is it called, morocco?
He got his friend Erich to give him lessons in German.
When Marina told him she was pregnant he thought his life made sense at last. A father took part. He had a place, an obligation. This woman was bringing him the kind of luck he never figured on. Marina Prusakova, herself born two months premature, weighing two pounds, from Archangel on the White Sea, halfway round the world from New Orleans. He took her face in his hands. Fair-haired wispy girl. Full mouth, high neck, blue-eyed flower girl, his slender pale narcissus. Let the child look like her, even that little sulky curl of the mouth, her eyes showing fire when she is angry. He danced her around the room, promised to take better care of her than anyone ever had. She would be the baby until the real baby came.
He told her the stores in America were incredibly well stocked, full of amazing choices. Whatever a baby needed, all you had to do was find the nearest department store. Whole departments for babies. Whole stores, babies only. You’ve never seen such toys.
He was home first, washing the breakfast dishes. He heard her climb the last flight, getting slower every day. She had ice cream and halvah in a bag.
“They’re getting ready to make Stalin disappear,” she said. “I walked past the square and it’s roped off.”
“They’ll have to use dynamite.”
“They’ll drag him down with chains.”
She put the food away and sat at the kitchen table, behind him, lighting up a cigarette.
“It’s way too big,” he told her. “They’ll have to blow it up.”
“Too many Stalinists still around. I think they’ll knock him down with chains and drag him off under cover of dark. So no one knows until it’s too late.”
“They already know. The square’s roped off. Put out that cigarette please.”
“I am doing much, much less these days.”
“No good for baby. No, no, no,” he said.
“I don’t do so much, Alek.”
“You hide them all around. find cigarettes in every comer. Very bad for baby.”
“I do less and less now. Two cigarettes today. What about the visas?