Andrei stood up. “Of course I don’t mind.” He smiled. “You may be stupid but you’re still Serov and that’s all that matters.”
Serov looked at him and said quietly, “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me for a long, long time.”
“So. Do you want to stay?”
“Yes, please.”
“Why are we speaking Russian?”
Serov laughed. “Because it’s easier than American.”
Despite what Serov had told him he said nothing to the family and when they all ate together that evening they spent their time talking about when they were all in Paris. Andrei said very little, listening to the rest of them chattering about those days that had seemed so innocent and full of hope.
The next day he had taken Serov to the beach and as they sat looking at the sea Serov said, “Don’t let any of them know that you’ve met me, or you’ll end up in one of the Gulag labour camps.”
“You really think that I matter so little to them?”
Serov shook his head in disbelief. “You haven’t learned a thing, Andrei, have you? They wouldn’t hesitate for a second. None of us matter. We’re just puppets on a string.” He looked at Andrei as he spoke. “The revolution ended when Stalin took over. When you and I were telling everybody about the wonders of communism there was no such thing. What Moscow gave us was Bolshevism. Dictatorship by a handful of men with a hundred thousand hangers-on waiting for their turn at the pig trough. They have luxury houses, radios, furniture, everything they want. But the people live in poverty, afraid of the local Party men who rule their lives.” He shook his head. “Is that what you work for, my friend?”
“But you were one of the privileged yourself. Why the sudden change?”
Serov turned to look at Andrei. “It wasn’t sudden.” He paused as if searching for the right words and then said, “Haven’t you ever—just once maybe—thought that it was dictatorship not a government in Moscow?”
Andrei didn’t reply and Serov went on. “You don’t have to answer me, Andrei. I know the answer. You’re the same as me. You come from a family background that was always Marxist. You took it all for granted. You never worked it out for yourself. And you end up as a Jew without a religion and a Russian without a country. You’ve made your life in the Party and you’ve given up the rest of the world as the price you pay. How many friends have you got, Andrei? None. Party people like you pretend that you don’t need friends. Not even Party friends. The truth is you couldn’t trust any one of them for a second. You never worked it all out for yourself. You took it from your father and then the Party training. You were great at arguing the Party line but just think back. All you were doing was making a case for something that Moscow had done that even Party members found unacceptable. You were a stooge, Andrei, a schlemiel.”
Andrei smiled. “If we’ve gone over to Yiddish there’s an old saying—a fool can ask more questions in an hour than ten wise men can answer in a year.”
Serov laughed. “There’s another one too—fools search always for yesterday.” Then, his face serious again, Serov said, “You should know better than me what you’re here for. You’re in intelligence because the Comintern doesn’t work any more in America. Americans can see through all the Party lines. Soviet propaganda doesn’t work here so people like you are only here to spy. The Party members here are the neurotics not the down-trodden. Even back in the Soviet Union nobody believes that Moscow are ‘the saviours of peace’ and ‘the true democracy.’ It was a dream, Andrei, and it didn’t work. They didn’t even intend it to work, it’s time to wake up.”
Andrei stood up slowly, brushing the sand from his clothes. “We’d better go home. It’s getting cold.”
“I’ll get the subway to the bus depot and get back to Washington.” He looked at Andrei’s face. “Have you had enough of me?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Can I come and see you all again?”
“Of course you can.”
“Are you going to tell Moscow that you’ve seen me?”
Andrei glanced briefly at Serov. “You’d better leave that to me.”
Serov said, “Can I ask you a personal question, Andrei?”
“I should think so.”
“When we were both in Paris I can remember you marrying a girl. A French girl. What happened to her?”
“She died.”
“I’m sorry, Andrei. Very sorry.”
“Phone me before you come next time.”
“I will. I will.”
As Aarons undressed that night to go to bed he arranged his clothes carefully on the chair beside the bed. He couldn’t put out of his mind what Serov had told him. But it wasn’t the first time that he had heard those stories. Some of it was probably true but exaggerated. It was like when a couple fall out of love and can only see the bad in someone they had once deeply loved. But he had no intention of mentioning Serov’s visit in his reports to Moscow.
Serov had two rooms just north of Dupont Circle. It was an old house and his rooms had high ceilings and big windows. There were two photographic prints on the main wall. One by Ansel Adams and one by Robert Doisneau that reminded him of Paris. There was a secondhand black and white TV on a small table alongside a record-player. Two armchairs and a coffee table were set in the bay window and a small dining table with four simple wooden chairs were in one corner of the room. The building he worked in was within walking distance of his rooms and he ate at a small French restaurant a block away from his home. Most of his colleagues saw him as living a strange restricted life as a recluse. But for Serov it was a small haven of peace without the torment of his conscience, no longer
