Mother Russia by Robert Littell Read Free Book Online Page B

without the green light from GLAVLIT. The GLAVLIT people served lukewarm ersatz coffee and agreed the project had potential, but insisted that nothing could be done until it had been taken up with the All-Union Sports Directorate.”
    The Volga slides to a stop in front of a gray stone structure on Dzershinsky Square not far from the Kremlin. Almost instantly the orderly has the general’s door open. Shuvkin steps onto the sidewalk, beckons his eccentric passenger to follow;this is the end of the line and Pravdin finds himself bidding good day to the general before the main entrance to the KGB complex—a building he has studiously avoided even passing in front of before!
    Retreating as nonchalantly as his pounding pulse will permit, Pravdin almost crashes into a sidewalk vendor demonstrating to silently watchful children tiny metal wind-up dolls doing military turns on the pavement. Pravdin’s fingers close around his piece of chalk; his eyes search out a rectangle of gray wall on the KGB building. Various juicy phrases come to mind and he is mightily tempted, but at the crucial moment he senses a certain wobbliness in his legs, a weakness in his writing wrist; in short, a loss of nerve. He bends his head into a wind that isn’t blowing and hurtles on.
    Passing GUM department store across from Lenin’s Tomb, Pravdin senses currents of strength flowing back into his veins. He pauses to tighten a sneaker lace, quickly scrawls on a ledge:
    To dine with the devil use a long spoon
    (Anon: Pravdin, even in the camps, had the instincts of a gourmet). Checking to be sure no one has spotted him defacing public property, he hurries off toward the Metropole.
    “Pravdin, R. I.,” Pravdin announced to the amazon with the guest list blocking the entrance, “at your beck and call.”
    She coolly checks the P’s , looks up at Pravdin, checks the P’s a second time, shakes her head sternly. “No Pravdin,” she says with finality.
    “Of course there’s no Pravdin,” Pravdin whispers. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Do you think they would permit my name to appear on a list that any Western operative could get his hands on. Reflect,” Pravdin orders, tapping a forefinger against his skull. “Are you a member of the Party?”
    The amazon nods carefully.

    “Then it comes as no secret to you that we are surrounded by enemies, that vigilance is everybody’s occupation.” Pravdin makes sure nobody is within earshot, leans across the table. “If anyone inquires whether there is a Pravdin, R. I., at the breakfast, you will know what to say.”
    “You can count on me, comrade,” the amazon pledges.
    Pravdin rewards her with a crooked smile, brushes past her into the Metropole dining room. Just inside the door he comes across Friedemann T.
    “Bitch, isn’t she?” his old friend mutters, a coffee in one hand, a glass of slivovitz in the other. “What are we here? Literary?”
    “What we are is theoretical physics,” Pravdin informs him, plucking a glass of slivovitz from the bar.
    “Theoretical physics.” Friedemann T. takes this in, screws up his face as if he is flipping through some mental file cards, raises his voice. “Don’t you agree that formulating the correct question is more difficult than trying to answer it?”
    Pravdin captures a plate of scrambled eggs, uncaps a salt cellar, pours salt into his palm, sprinkles some of it over the eggs and throws the rest over his shoulder. “Einstein once told Max Planck,” he casually remarks between mouthfuls of egg, “that it is the theory that decides what we observe.”
    “I have always marveled at the simplicity of Marx’s response to Hume’s problem of induction,” ventures Friedemann T. He grabs two sugar buns from a passing tray and offers one to Pravdin. Across the room the Lithuanian physicist, a mousy man with green-gray skin, is uttering a few stock words of appreciation to his hosts. There is a smattering of applause when he finishes.
    “I met