The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

it worked? That we just let them leave?
    Ha...we have a whole field branch there, in Israel. Even Vysotsky had a song, do you remember? “We missed our chance with Golda Meier’s spot, but one man of every four is our formerfolk.” A joke? Well, in every joke there’s a seed of truth, as they say...a grain. He cooperated with the organization too, Volodya Vysotsky did. What, you didn’t know?
    What did you expect? Of course, they were not trusted...the Jews. There were cases when veterans from among them applied for emigration, even Heroes of the Soviet Union. So many scandals! Who knew it would all end...so soon.
    Aha! I got something! Come on, come to Daddy...gotcha!
    Darn it, another roach...such a little thing, might as well throw him back in.
    This moment here—this is the fun: when you’ve got something on the hook, but you don’t yet know what it is! The most important moment, this. And back then I was still young, I hadn’t seen real fire, so to speak, and pulled up with that Jewish woman a whole, pardon me, cabal.... She talked to someone somewhere—they had their networks working like clockwork to help their own—and they found a way for her to get out...to slip off the hook, basically. They thought, you see, that I was also one of their own, only closeted—that maybe I changed to a Russian last name, when the government was fighting the rootless cosmopolitans. And such closeted people—they were rarely accepted into the corps, they worked as agents mostly, and worked hard. You’d work hard too, if, for instance, your mother was Jewish and your father was in the Nazi-sanctioned police! A schutzman, yeah...you’d spend your life bending over backwards. Pardon? Well, we won’t name names, these are respectable people now, in high posts. It’s not important. So anyway, back then they decided among themselves that I must be one of those people—that I covered up, you know, some stains on my biography and got into the organization with a perfect record. They thought they’d found a weak spot, and that’s where they hit—to take the fire off their woman and put me on the spot...the best move. It couldn’t fail.
    Beg pardon? Oh...that, you know, is just something that people think—that the KGB was omnipotent and no one couldget around it. In fact, the organization was as much of a mess as everything else...bureaucratic, backstabbing...I, too, had to write an explanatory report to my bosses to account for the two months when I didn’t get anything done. And then a thing like this hits—a complaint from your target, plus an anonymous letter—and that’s it, you’ve been marked! The shadow’s been cast: Jew won’t cross a Jew, you know, and that I’m probably getting help from some Sochnut of theirs, their Jewish till...for protecting my own from the KGB. What’s the first thing? To cast shadow on a person—and you go prove yourself an upstanding citizen after that! Go prove you weren’t double-dealing. That was a good, smart plan they had—they just miscalculated a bit. No one knew what really happened, remember...I didn’t know anything myself yet.
    And I was in law school by then, about to get my degree. Long-distance...got promoted to captain. Things were just starting to go well.
    It was hard, you know...it’s always hard when you are not trusted. When behind your back, people are happy that you’ve stumbled, because there’s a line waiting for your spot already. And at home—there was the same emptiness, nothing to lean against. The old man drank himself numb...my father, Boozerov. That’s how he told me—he was drunk; Mom just cried. He didn’t live much longer after that. He had a hard time dying, too—he had a grudge...against the whole world...cirrhosis—that’s not a walk in the park. Nika didn’t know him; she was born later...when he was already gone.
    Are you getting a draft there? No? Your feet warm enough?
    A stretch like that...you don’t want to go on living, don’t want to go home at night. What’s the point, you ask yourself? Just push the button, and that’s it. I didn’t know everything back then...but it was a shock, a real shock. And the thing of it was—it was all like the world conspired to mock me, you know, that yes, I am a Jew after all! A bastard. And that my mother, the woman who gave birth to me, was also under suspicion, same as I...in double-dealing.It’s like...a curse or something. You start thinking these thoughts and...God