They kept me there seventy-five days.

It didn't matter how many—it only mattered that I was out — and I wasn't going back to bed.

It was May when I got out. May, 1974, and in June I talked long and hard with Galina. It couldn't wait—we had to get it straight between us, settle questions, know where we were going. At least that's what I thought—and I should have known better— 1 should have known that with what was between Galina and me, thinking wasn't necessary. What questions should a man have when his woman will come to him through all that agony of snow?

"Sit, please," I said.

"All right," Galina said.

"I'm troubled, I'm thinking," I said. "Give me a minute."

"All right," Galina said.

"It's this," I said. "No matter what it looks like now, I'm going to get out. I mean, eventually, I know it will happen."

"So?"

"You signed certain papers, remember? And the girls did."

"Which papers?" Galina said. "Ah, yes, I know which ones— the ones about—"

I interrupted her. I did not want her to say it. I said, "The ones about your being entirely willing for me to leave the country, and the girls signed too."

"Yes, of course," this good woman said, "and it is true. We want you to have what you must have—at any cost, that is what we want."

"I know," I said, "and I am bothered by it—it's nagging at me, this whole thing. My thoughts aren't clear yet. This heart business—and the stroke—am I thinking clearly?"

"Yes, my darling," my wife said. "Perfectly. Please believe that." ^

"It's just that I've been thinking what will happen once I'm gone—and before it is possible for you and the girls to follow me. It will take time—who knows how long? And what will they do to you once I'm gone? I mean, what about work? Will you be able to get work? And the girls. Sveta's schooling—and Janna's work and school. There will be reprisals—I am certain of it."

"So? Are we not strong? Have we not already endured so much? It will be a small thing—and in time we will follow you and it will all be over."

"Yes, yes," I said, "but in the meanwhile. I mean, I just don't know—it troubles me terribly—but with the heart, I feel I must—I feel I must go as soon as I can go. But how can I go with a clear mind?"

"Because you must," my wife said. "Because you have paid for it a thousand times over. Because there is nothing to worry about. And because it is the only way—you first, then the girls, then me. It is the only way. We have discussed this, Vitya. Before the heart, before the stroke—and now more than ever, it is the only way, the only decision. We decided this years ago. Nothing has changed. Please, my husband, clear your mind."

MCTOR HERMAN ^';g

"Yes," I said. "I know. But I cannot."

"My husband," she said, "listen to me—it is very simple. Unless you go, we cannot follow, and is it not true that you want America for us? So! There is no other way—you first, then the girls, then me. And did I not follow you through worse than this? Is it not because of the way you look at me and I look at you? Please," she said, "I do not want to discuss this anymore. It is settled. Please, my darling, clear your mind."

I said to my wife, "You are a good woman." I said to her, "I love you so."

"Love, love, love," she said to me, and touched my hair.

And so, as required and as planned by us some while previous to that time, we divorced, my beloved wife and I, registering the papers that were necessary, and thus taking one of the last steps toward the goal we'd so long and so arduously been working for. We had put this step oflF for a time when we felt we might be nearing our objective—and somehow the heart attack and the stroke, they somehow conveved to me the hunch that it was going to happen, that America was not that far off anymore, that I would incredibly, unimaginably—great ♦ !—I would be going home.

Galina had to move to Moscow to prove we were not living together. She went there with the girls because that was where there was work for her, a job that had been arranged. I didn't want to talk about how it was when we said good-bye. It was very bad for us all—perhaps worst for me—because of the guilt I felt and could not shake off, no matter what they said to me to make it all right for me.

We tried to put a good face on it—but it was no good trying.

We just did it, and that is the end of it—untried surgeons operating with crude instruments.

It was terrible for me when they left. I could not keep my spirits up. What did I have? I had no one but my family—in all of this alien land, I had nothing, no one save those three that were mine and that I loved so desperately.

And then ever)thing got immediately worse—and it was hard to find the strength to fight it.

My heart, the stroke, the loss of my family—these things left me with little in the way of reserves to fight what came next. I was

fired from my teaching jobs—and then I was blackhsted and unable to get work, anywhere, at anything. And then they started taxing me, saying that I had earned money I had not earned and forcing me to pay taxes on this phantom income. I sold the family car to pay those taxes. It helped.

But the next thing was they came to the apartment. They said they had to search the place. They confiscated every document and photograph they could lay their hands on—books, papers, records, documents, even clothing. Those KGB men just came in there and started going through everything, and they threw everything into cartons and took it out of there.

They left me some clothing—and those other things—but even photographs, they took even those.

I just sat there watching.

I was too exhausted to protest—and what good would it do? Besides, insofar as anything really important went, I had all that somewhere else. Years back I'd started hiding things, documents and the diaries I'd kept and so forth—in fact I had three places where I kept things in hiding, and even to this day I cannot say what those places were. Even when Galina comes, I still cannot tell. Nor can I tell about the methods I found to get things out by mail and by courier.

It is nothing I would keep secret unless I had to—for those still there who use the same places and the same methods.

It does not matter. There are ways. We all know this. In any situation, there are ways. In the worst of conditions, people find a way. There is never any policing such human resourcefulness—and the more you try to crush it, the more elaborate are its devices.

But their coming there to my place and searching and taking, it was a violence against my home that seemed to me curiously ugly. I don't know why. There is something about people coming into your place—especially when it is the intimate place of your wife and your children. It is ugly in a way that goes very deep into something primal in a man, into his instinct to protect, I suppose. I sometimes thought about it in relation to the invasion of my person in those prisons and in the camps, how picking through the objects in my home seemed to me a greater indecency than their forcing their fingers into my rectum to probe and search.

Perhaps I am unusual in this way—but I don't think so. My guess is that other people feel the same thing, and it is strange that

we feel it, this violation of something, just the corners of a room. It is obscene. The place is dirty after that.

They came to do that in 1975.

I made my annual application in 1976. It was just after the Helsinki Accords.

I waited as I had waited every year. I waited to be told. Ah, no, a pertinent item has not been filled in, a pertinent document was not attached, a pertinent signature was left off, a pertinent this or pertinent that has been omitted, and anyway, with regrets, with apologies, with all due sympathies, petition denied!

It was approved! Notice came. My application had been approved!

I had to sit down when I saw it there! I cannot tell you the feelings that rushed up in me—the years of waiting, the inferno of years before that. I sat there bewildered, disbelieving, and so elated I wanted to howl aloud. And then I did it—like a boy, letting out great whoops of uncontainable joy. I yelled and laughed and then I wept and got down on the floor and spread my arms against it and tried to stop the world from turning me over and over.

A few days later, a letter from Dave came.

Dear Victor:

It is my understanding from the State Department that your application to return to your homeland has been approved by both the government of the U.S.S.R. and of the U.S., and in fact you may already have had word of this wonderful news. Let me congratulate you on the success of your efforts and extend my sincere wish that you do everything you can to take good care of yourself during this difficult period. I know that your heart condition was a grave blow, but I want you to take special pains to look after your general health.

My most affectionate regards,

David Herman.

As always, I read between the lines well enough. Correspondence between me and Dave had been going on for years now, and I guess we'd both gotten very good at deciphering what the other one actually meant to say. Did I think they would actually try to

kill me? Surely Dave thought so. In any event, real threat or no, I allotted a certain amount of money to pay for the services of a bodyguard—and it was easy enough for me to get a first-class one, what with my connections in boxing. Moreover, since the fellow was a boxer, perhaps his hanging around me so much was a little less suspect than it might otherwise have been. But what did it matter if they were suspicious? Wasn't it better that way? Wouldn't I be safer if they were on notice that I was wary, that I expected something?

Anyhow, I got a young middleweight from a neighboring town, a very trustworthy boy who respected me for what I'd taught him, and I think he was fond of me too. He was willing to look after me in a sort of informal way—and he said he didn't want any money for doing it—but I pressed it on him, not all that much, but enough to be fair to the both of us. The fact was, after the special tax assessment and the loss of both of my jobs, there wasn't that much from which to give him—but I wanted him to have something.

I'd had instructions that I was to report to the Passport Department on the 9th of February, that I was to appear there in Kishinev on the 9th, and that I would be able to fly to the States from Moscow on the 10th. It was mid-January when word came, and I immediately got word to Galina. It was arranged that she would return to Kishinev to our apartment—we would see each other in Moscow, and then she would take up residence in the apartment once I'd gone. We decided that the girls should return to Kishinev immediately, to be with me until it was time for me to go.

On the 8th of February I bought three plane tickets for Moscow—but I did this through a friend. The tickets were in his name. The KGB reviews lists of all persons purchasing air passage, and I wasn't taking any chances. I even went so far as to make it a six A.M. flight, just because I felt that was the safest time to go. I don't know why. Maybe I thought people are just a little less alert at that hour of the day. Anyway, that's what I did.

The night of the 9th I went to the passport office—around six o'clock, and by seven o'clock I had my release papers. That friend drove us straight to the airport and we got on that plane and we got to Moscow and registered at a small out-of-the-way hotel.

I went back to the hotel.

On the way to the hotel, I thought of the exchange I'd had with the man I had to deal with to get my papers.

VICTOR HERMAN _359

"Oh, yes, Herman, we have been waiting for you."

"Thank you very much," I said.

"How excellent," he said, this bland man who worried me for the very reason of his blandness, "that you are to be reunited with your family in your motherland."

"I am very happy," I said.

"Good, good," he said, "and we have arranged passage for you tomorrow."

"Well," I said, "that was very kind, but I'm not sure yet if I'll be using that ticket. I think I'm going to stick around Moscow for a while, maybe as much as a month."

"Oh, yes?" he said, his manner showing not the least curiosity. "And why is that, may I ask? One would think you were in a great haste to return to your family in your motherland."

"Oh, I am," I said, "except I've got a lot of friends here in Moscow, and I want to say good-bye to them all. You know how it is—it takes time, and now that I'm going, what's the rush? That's the way it is, 1 guess—you hurry up, and then, when you get there, you're not in such a hurry anymore."

"Yes, of course," the man said, shuffling papers and then taking a hard look at me. "So, you do not believe you will be going tomorrow?"

"Doubtful," I said. "Very doubtful. I'll call and cancel the reservation—make a new one. About a month, I think, maybe three weeks, sometime in there."

"Excellent, excellent," the fellow said, and that seemed to conclude our business. He did some more shuffling of papers and rubber-stamped this and that, had me sign a receipt, and by nine o'clock I was out of there and on my way back home.

In Moscow we all met the next night—Galina, the children, me —in the streets at a place we worked out well beforehand. I kissed my wife and kissed my wife and kept on kissing her. The girls stood around, and I think we knew they were crying. We kissed hello and kissed good-bye and made our plans for the morning, and then the girls and I went back to the hotel and Galina someplace else.

I had the schedule worked out to the minute.

We all knew it—the girls, Galina—knew exactly what was going to take place and where each of us would be and when and what we would do if anything went wrong.

At six o'clock the following morning, I took a taxi from the

hotel. The girls had left five minutes before me. I stayed in the lobby while they got into their taxi and gave the driver instructions. They were to take that taxi to within three blocks of the American embassy, and then walk the rest of the way until they were stationed, out of view, across the street from the embassy building. Galina would arrive shortly thereafter and take up a position about fifty yards from the girls.

Had Galina made the telephone call the night before?

There is a special number to call—a line to the embassy. It is a safe line—and those who need to know about it find out about it, no matter how regularly the number is changed. The word goes out to the people whose job it is to pass it along.

Even before I'd left Kishinev, I had the number.

And when I was with Galina the night before, she confirmed it through the sources she had in Moscow. She said it was the right number—and she would not forget. Forget? Impossible!

She was to have made the call—and of course she made it. How think that she would not!

That telephone call would tell someone at the embassy the precise minute I would present myself at the embassy doors— and if not, then they would know inside there that something had gone wrong.

There was more to this—a code number that Galina was to recite into the phone, a number passed to her by certain people in Moscow who had it from the person who would answer the embassy phone, and that number would mean my name, because my name was not to be used on the telephone.

I make it all sound easy, but it wasn't. From the time I'd had word I was getting out to actually getting out, things got theatrically complicated, and you needed a lot of help to manage all the complications, and there were people to help you, people whose business it was to help lots of people in these circumstances, and you can't really talk about it very much because then the whole thing wouldn't work anymore, because there remain in the Soviet Union so many people for whom this network of "friends" that suddenly reveals itself must do its work. Maybe the things I think are so secret are not really so secret. But I will not be the one to talk about them. No one binds you to secrecy, but common sense tells you what you should say and what you shouldn't say, and I will not be the one to say more than is necessary. It is enough to know that one does not do these things alone, that one must have help, that there

VICTOR HERMAN . ____361

are people who will give it when the time comes. It is enough to say that one is grateful for that, and that is all one should be saying on the subject.

Soviet KGB guard the embassy. They were all around there when I showed up, even at that hour. I arrived exactly when I was supposed to. I got out of the taxi, I paid the driver, and I walked right in. The guards did not challenge me. I walked right past them and the door opened for me without my even signaling.

I'd been told they could see outside from inside, and that twenty-four hours a day they were looking outside, monitoring the area, and that if the guards tried to stop me, they'd come outside and get me once I was on U.S. ground. But no one tried to stop me, and the door opened up for me as if my body had interrupted a beam and an electric eye had gone into operation, and it was all just as automatic as that.

Two of them inside laughed when I did what I did. It just happened. It just came out of me. I called out, "Hot dog. Hurray!" when I stepped through that door.

They smiled at me with the grandest smiles I'd seen in more than four decades, and maybe they were just ordinary American smiles, but they seemed to me to be wonderful smiles, real smiles, smiles that let go more than anything you ever saw in Russia, and I would be lying if I said that there was something else I noticed more than those smiles when I got inside.

One of the fellows inside called back, "Hot dog is right!" and I looked at him, and he was smiling at me, and you knew you were home when you saw that kind of smile. I just grinned that whole time in there. All that time I felt as if I had the most ridiculous grin on my face. But I couldn't stop doing it. How long had my face been grave, stern, sullen? It is the normal look, is it not? You thought so until you got inside and suddenly knew all over again all you'd been away from and how much it had changed you to be gone from it.

I grinned and nodded my head and smiled at everyone and everyone smiled back, and I felt like giggling. I felt sublimely happy —and boyish and weepy and silly and goofy and dreamy and crazy, and I just wanted to lie down on their carpeting and sleep or roll over and over or look at them all and hug them all and keep shouting "Hot dog!" at every one of them.

But I just grinned until my face hurt and stood there grinning

while they all came up to me and shook my hand and some of them slapped me on the back and they all said hello and congratulations and welcome home and things like that, pumping my hand and smiling at me.

I don't think I said six words all that time I was in there, I was so busy grinning and nodding my head. I'm glad I didn't have to talk. I don't think I could have.

They gave me a passport, my passport, an American passport, and when I looked at it and saw what was special about it, I shouted "Hot dog!" again and some of them laughed and the fellow standing near me slapped me on the back again.

It was a Bicentennial passport.

I was in there for over two hours.

They told me to stay at the Dawn Hotel until the time I was to go to the airport. They said that was the only place I was allowed to stay because of the legal status of my situation—I think it was because I now had an American passport but was not registered as a tourist. We all shook hands again, and with that grin still on my face and that Bicentennial passport in my pocket, I walked out of there, and when I crossed the street Galina and the girls ran up to me and we all kissed like mad, and we hailed down a taxi and drove to the Dawn. But I didn't like the way things looked at the Dawn—it just didn't look right to me. They said at the desk that they couldn't give us a room until three in the afternoon and we waited there a little while, and I kept thinking people were watching us, and I got very jumpy. I gathered us all up and took a taxi away from there, and I told the driver to take us to a dump I knew about, a real dive of a hotel I knew about from the times I'd been in Moscow. I got to the manager there and gave him some cock-and-bull story about having left my passport at home, and then I bribed him to get a room. I paid him a hundred rubles cash for a room that went for ten—and then he wanted a second hundred for his trouble —and then he still wasn't sure he was going to cooperate, so I promised him I'd give him a third hundred extra when I checked out.

We went up to room number 10 on the third floor, and we talked for about an hour or so, and then the girls went off with Galina to the room where Galina had been staying. I wasn't smiling anymore. I could not smile at my family like that. It was awful,

feeling so good and feeling so bad. It was not good at all, and the girls cried—but Galya was all right. I knew she would always be all right. That woman could take anything I could take—and then take it all over again.

We worked out a schedule for the next five days—where, when, how to meet, and all sorts of contingency plans if this or that did not work out. Were all these precautions necessary?

I will never know.

I know that's what we did. It seemed the smart thing to do. I wasn't going to let down my guard for a minute, and I didn't.

I can't tell you the name of that dumpy hotel. The manager made me sweat, but still he let me have that room—and I will not pay him back by giving the name of his place.

The next day I picked up the money Dave wired me—a thousand dollars, and later that day I got my ticket.

Pan Am.

Pan American.

The very name, it gave me chills to say it to myself.

I mainly bought the girls clothes with that money. I used up most of it on clothes for them—and I got something special for Galya—and when I gave it to her, I said, "This is because you look at me," and I should not have said that because it made her cry, and it was hard for her to get control of herself after that.

I didn't need all that money. Who starves in America? Please God I should only get to America, and whatever was what, I would manage. Worry in America? Those who do, it is a sadness—but for us who've been in other places, for us there is nothing to worry about in America.

We said good-bye. How many times had we said good-bye? We said good-bye very fast—because this time it was the worst.

"In America," I said to each one of them.

"In America," Janna answered, kissing me.

"In America, Papa," my Sveta said.

"Two potatoes," I said to her, kissing my firstborn again.

And to Galya I said, "Love, love, love."

I went away from them.

It was the 15th of February. The year was 1976.

The rest happened as in a dream.

The taxi ride to the airport, to Sheremetyevo, the business of

checking in and going through customs, all those large and small motions of travel, they happened as in a dream, and I did not wake up from it until that Boeing 707 had jerked free from inertia and rolled the long way into position, nose to the wind. They revved the engines full-blast, all the way up, then all the way down, then up again, and the great lumbering thing started slowly, roughly forward, and you could feel the magnificent power in the thing, but there was no speed yet, as if all over this giant little brakes held it back, and then those little brakes one by one gave up their puny purchase, and the force and rush were terrific, and I didn't know where I was sitting and who I was sitting next to, because in my mind I was alone in that cockpit, and it was my hand that was on the stick and the plane was not a plane like this, a thing huge and with a complexity of instruments, but was a little thing instead, my shivering, creaking U-2, that crude U-2 I used to wheel through the crazy Gorky sky. But its power was fire and gigantic, a hundred monstrous engines arrayed in banks that hugged the mile-long wings that swept back from me on either side and were silver and polished granite and platinum and diamond, and I let the throttle out and eased back the wooden stick, and it blazed cold, a bolt of ice. I could feel the great ramming force all around me and then feel me and all that was around me going up into that leaping clarity, nothing but blue all around me and a detonation behind, my wings gleaming and sweeping back from my sides, long and glittering and jeweled in the light, my face turned up to the colossal glaze above me, that light, that light, and there is no noise, and no wind, and no language, though my mouth is wide and singing, and then everything that is me and around me, this machine and its glistening impulse and all the surface of skin that enfolds me, it fuses and flashes and opens into something, unfurls itself, races away from itself at infinite speed, these needles of light going up and out, a disk of hard gas skimming, my mind the long line of its diameter, all force gone now and in its place the achievement of silence, perfect and stunning, and only the sun's gliding eye keeping the secret that you have vanished into motion, are possessed of no dimension but the idea of the vector, and up ahead of you it is all escape, a radiance of bright soaring.

Wasn't earth my first prison? At the beginning of things, wasn't earth that which prepared me for the rest? Was not everything not up here not free?

I had looked up long ago and had seen those white letters, and after that it was all a prison. There was love down there— my daughters and Galya, Papa, Mama, dead Leo, Miriam, and Rebecca, and David, good David, and dear, gone Red Loon—and there was also the other down there, the face of every Belov, all that ruin of flesh, haggard and gaping, the furious death of astonished rats, a suffocation of ponderous snow.

I sat in that plane like any other, a man like all the rest, gray suit, brown shoes, seatbelt fastened, going from, going to. To what? Woodward Avenue? The Fisher Building? Seven-Mile, Nine-Mile, the spokes of Detroit? My home? I would taste Vernors and see Ironwood and I would tell myself I was home, and there would be nothing to tell me it was not true. Yet what was it that I left behind me? Trees cracked open in a black sprawl of rage, wood that showed its dripping organs to you and came at you to kill? That wood will follow me, and so will the mist pooled into blisters everywhere on the concrete that formed that devil cell. We sat there, sixteen men, all staring at a circle whose fierce circumference encompassed sixteen separate visions, each limitless and utterly alone.

And sometimes we saw each other and did not know a name.

Who knows another man? My father and the son he made? I write this knowing that it happened, that I am this Victor Herman I tell about, a boy who went out, a man who came back—my name is Victor Herman, but who is the man with that name? He is no more in place for me than was the shadow of my little plane rippling across the tumultuous snow. I feel I am somewhere outside of these things, beyond events and the flesh they are inscribed on. I feel I am a point without dimension, a velocity coursing first here and then there, a motion through the waters of time.

It is chalk, everything I have told you, a smoke making letters in the sky. The earth turns, the air splashes, and what is written disperses. But for a little while the eye can still decipher something. Then, all at once, it is a cloud.

And the next time you look, even that is gone.

EPILOGUE

The girls are with me now, Svetlana and Janna—both safe here with me in Detroit. My flight over was uneventful, although that hardly seems the way to talk about one's passage out of Hell.

I suppose I mean in contrast to the girls, their flight. For they came to me fifteen months later, freed at last. But the crossing for them was not so easy. It was anything but uneventful.

They, like me, had Kennedy as their destination, but the routing called for a change of airplanes in Montreal. Meanwhile, all the arrangements had been made—that is, I would fly in from Detroit to meet them, and they were not to stray, not do anything, until what they could do was walk into my arms.

It happened that in Montreal a helpful flight agent presented himself. Ah, said he, and where are you young ladies headed? To our father, in America, they said. Oh, said he, and have you been away from him for long? Oh, yes, they said, for very long.

The Montreal change of aircraft called for a stopover of about three hours. But since the helpful flight agent wished very much to be helpful, and since he could see how eager the girls were to be on their way to me, he suggested that they revise their plans and take an earlier flight from Montreal to New York. You can save at least an hour and a half, said he, and then he quite helpfully made the arrangements, the altering of their tickets and so on. Why wait? he said. Why not be off to your father straightaway?

The girls were delighted. The arrangements were made. And they boarded a Royal Air Maroc plane.

I, of course, had taken up my station to meet them. At the Pan American terminal.

Well, the girls had flown before—in Russia. In Russia an airport has one terminal. At Kennedy there are many—and at which one you will be found depends on which airline you fly.

I was at the Pan Am gate—waiting. My friend and lawyer Bob Greenstein was with me. We were there hours sooner than we had to be—waiting.

But the girls were meanwhile waiting too.

They had landed—all safe and sound—all the way from Moscow. They had of course landed in an Air Maroc plane. And there they waited for me, at the Air Maroc terminal, thinking. We are here!

But of course they weren't. And like the good girls they are, they waited—not straying, not moving from the spot, just doing as their father had instructed.

Meanwhile, I waited at my post at the Pan Am gate, and when their plane set down and had made its way to the gate, my arms trembled with the wanting of what I'd been promised to have.

We all stood there waiting—and then the passengers began streaming in, all that motion of arrival erupting all around me. My arms trembled. I craned to see. This one? No? Then this one! Ah, no. All right, the next? The next?

All those people moved into my burning vision, but not any of them was Svetlana or Janna.

When it was clear that they had not been among the arriving passengers, that it was not possible they might have slipped unrecognized (and unrecognizing) past us, I vaulted over the restraining rope and started to make my way into the aircraft. But a member of the crew blocked my passage.

"You can't go in there!" he said.

"I must," I said. "My daughters. They're on that airplane! There must be something wrong—perhaps they're sick."

"No," he said, "there's no one on there but crew," he said. "Believe me, mister, the plane's empty. Everybody's out."

I came close to fainting.

But I did not faint.

We went to the Security Office. We called Moscow; we called Kishinev; we called Pan Am and Montreal and the State Department. We called everywhere.

Meanwhile, in the Royal Air Maroc terminal, the girls waited.

They waited three hours—and when they'd waited four hours, they began to cry.

It was only when they cried that the mishap was uncovered. Another flight agent—also helpful. It took an hour and a half for him to get the story straight and sort it all out.

I could have kissed him. I could have strangled his fellow flight agent in Montreal,

But I used up all my kissing on Sveta and Janna.

All the way back to Detroit, I could not keep myself from kissing them.

They are in school here now. They are learning how to program computers.

It's hard for them, the life, how different everything is. TTiey're shy, and the differences make them shyer. But now and then they do a bit more than go to school and make meals for me. More and more they do a bit more, and by the time Galina joins us, I imagine she'll say, "Oh, Vitya, how American they are!"

Perhaps she'll say that. It will make us all laugh.

But I know there is something else that she will say first.

She will say, "Why do you look at me?"

I know how I will answer.

I began setting down this record about a month after I had made my way home, the only survivor of all those men and women and children who had gone from Detroit to Gorky and ended in Siberian camps all those many years ago. I am the one, the only one, who got back, who lived through it all.

The girls sleep in the next room—while I sit at my typewriter night after night after night—and all day long. There was nothing in me save the will to set it all down.

It's written now—all those days and nights yielding what I've put before you.

It's finished now—this account—and the girls are right next door. It's all done, all that bad time ended and behind me now— but still, as I write this last of it. I am here and my beloved is there.

They promised.

They said, just wait until the first day of 1978. The date, they said, was firm.

They said the same for the last day of last January. And then the same for the end of February. And now it is the end of March— and still—still—that woman who danced across the chill floor in that Krasnoyarsk gymnasium, pale feet, black hair, that woman, my beloved Galina, is there, and I am here.

This room that I write in is bare. Typewriter, paper, this table,

the bed, a chair. Sometimes I look out the window. When I can write no longer, I sometimes do that—or I turn in my chair and gaze at that bed.

Galina will come.

I will shoo the girls away from the little kitchen. As to the cooking, I will do all of that. A simple meal. Just potatoes, cut thick and fried in cod liver oil.

There is a bottle of champagne cooling already—I've had it in the refrigerator since the first of the year.

It cools there—and once a week the girls buy two fresh potatoes and throw the old ones out.

I gaze at that bed. It is a small room, and I only need lean a little bit in my chair to touch the blanket that covers that bed.

I will sit here—eating, forking those terrible potatoes into my mouth—and she will sit across from me— there —on that blanket— a plate of those potatoes held in her white, white hands.

I will pour and then place the bottle of champagne on the floor between us.

Here, my darling, darling wife, your glass.

I don't think either of us will smile very much—or finish the meal that I have made.

Perhaps one glass. Perhaps we will drink one glass.

She will touch her lips and then set the goblet down. I imagine she will put it there, on the floor, very near the bed. She will touch her lips and raise her eyes to mine.

Will she speak?

No, I don't think so.

Nor will I.

Except to say, "Because you look at me."

Detroit March, 1978

PART 6

ADDENDA

Monday, February 18, 1933

DETROIT EVENING TIMES (f

IPRRE FIELOpetroit Boy Wins Fame SEiyiOR CIILIS PflR PACIFIC ! As^indy of Russia' Nftt SETER

FIR CRIME

OatrarMil Bervte* Win BAJJ FRANCISCO, Feb 18 — 'Ith the flrat of Pan-American ultl-motoreJ transpacific clip->rs. Col. Charles A. Undbergh at !■ controls, expected to roar In 'sr the Golden Gate within two Mks, work was under way today get Alameda Ajrport ready to celve the flying boat The yacht basin at the airport. Kaed by Pan-American as the est coaat base for Its Hawah-rilllpplnes-China line. wa« being bared out to serve as a landing irbor for the new planes "Clipper No. 7.' a Sikorsky ship pable of carrying 46 passengers

Ex-Northwestern High

Student May Soon

Fly Atlantic

Comrade Victor Herman, forme*. Detroit icboolboy, today Is hall%ll In the Soviet UnioD as "the Undbergh of Russia '

Only 19 years old. he is a daredevil filer a parachute Jump record breaker, medal winning mark^ man and excellent all around athlete. Soon he may fly the At-

lantic.

Today the Tim rade Victor U« bergh of Russia.'

late of Northwei

190

discovered Com-lan, "the LlDd-

Vlctor Herman, rn High School.

fact, American 60&4 Iron wood

Detn

tur, is at Miami, where picked

ewa from Pan-Ameiican s Carib-

an service have been testing the

'o In long experimental flights

>he sea—somr of them 3.000

long, or 600 miles beyond

.ongeat trek m ihe transpa-

lonel Lindbergh la expected to the clipper west late this th. by way of the Panama inal. With him is scheduled to Col Clarence Young, the air

hearn. attorney for Ihe an line. Id

"The plan 1» for Colonel Llnd-ergh to r*>ach here wllh the rit ship on or about the flrst r March, and'to tA.Ue her out n the Inaugural flight shortlv r}*{ that Regular service will ol be Inbiltuted for »ome time, owever. aa Intermediate baae)! re not completml.'' After a few days of testmK and nmg up, the "Lone Eagle" will ke off for Canton, by wqy of )nolulu. the Midway Islands. ake Uland, Guam ar.d Manila.

I resultji of that in-iuRural flight

II depend the schedule put into eel by Pan-American wh^«n pas-iger and mail flights arc begun

rhe clippers arc designated to iintain a 16-houi schedule be-een San Francisco and Hawaii. Bir longest nonstop hop over the can Amelia Carhart fl^'w the

REENIITRGKS AUTO BOARD

rOLEDO. Feb 18 -- W-lliam een, president of the American deration of Labor, today had de-ired in an address that "the ao-lled National Automobile Labor ard I

"Vickie never went In (or ath-I leUcs or anything like that while j going through Northweatem High as (ar a^ the tenth grade," smiled I his pretty slsl-r, Mrs. Rebecca I Laing. 21. of 8581 Bo'den avenue. -ALWAYS A DAREDEVIL'

"He was always a daredevil.

I crazy '•nough to do anythlji|, aftd

waa greatly interested In mechan-

Ica. He waa always pulling old

CATS apart. Otherwise, I gueta ha

I waN just an ordinary boy.

"Then In Sep»ember, 1931, my father. Samuel Herman, waa out of work and he accepted an offer to go to RuiLsia to become an

only 4.

.ther

haa died there, all went witb him. I could hav^ gone, ton, and taught school there, but preferred to stay here.

"Vic continued hi^ high school education there and then w^nt Into flying school. It was widle he was In high school he went out for a trar-k team. In l!fl3, he wrote uk. he won 12 medals for athletics and marksmanship. PLACES IN 9 EVENTS

"In the 1933 ^tovlet Sportacltde, reprewntlng Gorki, Autoiawxl, where the famllv lives, he plated second, third or fourth In nne events — various racea, high ind broad jump, swimming 4nd shooting.

"However. I cue«« It waa wfcen he broke the world record lor the parachute himp they begpm calling Vic -the Undbergh of Russia." A friend of Victor. John Srrith, another American living in Rudia,

desci t Uni(

He

the

-ibed

St all around ffLh-he event for |h(

;ed labor is d*>sirous obtaining collective barg.-ininK [he automobile industry thiough ceful methods. Green said, if lessary it will utilize other meth-Includlng strikes, to obtain

ffeci 2 Changes

At Liquor Store

JACKSON, Mich. Feb 18-Lyle Hunt, member of the Jackson lard of Education and former filetic director of St. John's High hool, has replaced Benjamin ^eetl as manager of the liquor ire here. C. Forrest Braund re-Lcca Laster Grlndall as cashier

"Thirty thounand people gathered September 6 at the . Bj-Mg field to see the pnrachut* c«nt««t. After some stunt flying the JuiTf>-ers came out, »omo jumpiag while loopini, or doing a sitn. Then Victor came ouL JtMPS. EATING APPLE

"I watched his plane soar dut of sight above the clouds. Tten came a radiogram saying he ias 24.800 feet up and Jumping. Aler a little I saw him through my glasses, hurtling down with |he •peed of lightning.

"I could see him turning htid over heels and spinning tow^d us. 'Why doesn't the paraclpte open?' the crowd murmuredk It didn't open until he waa lioo feat above the ground. Throtgh my glaases I could see him dong

"When he come down I to^d he waa eating an apple. 'I foipd It In my pocket when I puM the rip c«rd,' he aald. 'and tnre

)ionnes View Latest U'>*ii^^« of Babies

VICTOR HERMAN. 19,

"Russian Lindbergh," in his Winter uniform as cadet air commander. Until four years ago Herman was on*; of Northwestern High School'a hundreds of pupils here Is Detroit.

wa« nothing 'l«e t.> do, •.*> I ate It' It waa (he best example of nerve I «ver saw " WANTS TO FI.V SKA

"Vie graduat«>d from flvlnc school last September a/id now is going to the flying academ)," said his sistei "His ^rachute record has since been broken, but he writes he Is going t« try for a

"He loves It there—you couldn't pay him to come buck here, although he Is still an American citlxen. and Is not a Communist." Nevertheless, 'h* 'Rus^mn Lindbergh" may return to his native Detroit, she added

"He haa asked for a plane to try to fly the Atlantic, and haa been promlaed one by oftlclals." [said Mrs. Lams "He's very ank--ioua to do that."

By Karl H von Wlegand ConrrtcM. 1SS», bv I nl>rr«al Service, ln«. LONDON. Feb 18.—Adventurous American, Brlti-sh and German airmen, aa well as White Russian officers, are offering their services to Emperor Hailie Selassie of Abyssinia, lion of Judah and king of the kings, In the threatened war between the descendant of King Solomon and Queen Sheba and lUly. it became known here

Public enthusiasm In Italy U being stirred and imagination flred by legends about the gold mines of Solomon and Sheba and the Idea of a crusading conquest of ths Ethiopian empire, unconquered in 3,000 years—and excepting Japan—the oldest unconquered country on the globe-

Although Premier Mussolini this week offlclally said he had "no aggreaalve plans," news of Italian expeditionary forces actually starting for Abyssinia came somewhat aa a shock here and in Geneva.

Ras Tafari. now Emperor Selassie. Is successor to Menellk, Abyssinia's great national hero, who annihilated fen Italian army of HOOO In the ba'.tle of Adowah •- -'- -qr.". attempted

Wtr« WA8HfNGTON. Feb 18-dent Roosevelt today had pleted hi? message to Congi asking eitension of NRA for two

Meanwfiiie Senator Pat McCar-ran (D) of Nevada loosed a blistering attack on NRA code authorities, charging them with being a "shelter for organized crime "

McCari .*j, jointly sponsoring with Senate- Nye. North Dakuls Insurgent Republican, a resolution calling for senatorial Investigation of NRA and Its codes, i^ preparing

battle Iha

nay i

ck the Sei

I said hi

MANY TELEGRAMS

In a statement McCa had received 1,500 telegrams since the resolution was introduced Thursday He added

"The charges Include not only oppression of small Industry.

discrin

arbitrary mlause of power and hindrance of recovery, but also the direct charge that the codea have become a shelter for organised crime."

Declaring all but fS pe ;he persons communicat 'illing

names, McCarian said , ^ /

"The souh^ of these r«iinplalnt« { \ ^ |*

renders them all the more crav^ U \ V

and I sincerely believe Me uoi<(d J| \ ^

he derelict In our duty if wejjj 1 Ignored <»T permK<^4 Wl *" * ''-'-^*. ^

conditions which have artaen under NRA." NOT ATTACKING NRA

McCarran declared he ws< not attacking NRA so much •» he m«* seeking to find 'what evil- ,uost under it" He added-

"The NRA aUII U an experi mental agency, if ft Is to become an Integral part of <.iir government, It Is a fundamental duty of Congress to scrutlnite what has I been accomplished, what needs t correction and what must l>e ; remedied, to ascertain and ellmln-; ate evils If they exist and to satisfy the people of the Tnited State* this Institution. If approved. Is worthy of approval,"

Back Door Burglar Hunted in Dearborn

Coti bet» mod sug» fres styl PA

Sh

Cutif ura Soap

For the Daily Care of Your Hary^M

Calleara Saap every time you waali your bands; it will do much to prevcat redaesa and rougfanssi, eaused by ^■■'7 tasks, sad to keep tba baads soft, snooib sad \orttj.

VERTiaKMKNT

WEAK WOMEK

MANY wofiifp! J both young ari. / middle-aged t<lil4r X

ged .uf/Ji from periodic pau.-in lirie or bacV

ADDENDUM A

A few years after Victor Herman left America with his family, his home town read about his acclaim as "The Lindbergh of Russia."

ADDENDUM B

JAIL TAP LANGUAGE

The English translation of the Russian jail tap language appearing above shows its division of the alphabet into five columns of five letters. To spell the word "dog," for example, one tap indicates the column beginning with "a," followed by four taps for the fourth letter of that column, "d." The next letter is derived by three taps followed by five taps, "o," and finally, two taps and then two more would spell "g." Numerals were tapped out as words: 101, "one-o-one."

After each word was completed, the sender would tap fast several times and the receiver of the message would also tap fast to show he understood and the message would continue. If a mistake was made or a message was unclear, a rubbing, erasing sound would be heard. Prisoners became adept at using a brief, telegraphic style.

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