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Authors: Sean Michaels
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to my open left hand. Another student did the same. We skipped rope and did push-ups. Sifu arrived with Yu Wei, Lughur and some other students I didn’t know. They took off their shoes and touched right fist to left palm. Sifu demonstrated falling. We all fell and got up and fell again. Then we practised
chi sao
, the hand dance, standing with partners and moving, always remaining wrist to wrist, flowing and following, sensitive. But I had no sensitivity that evening. I kept losing my position. I kept seeing, in my mind’s eye, my typewritten name.
That night, I called the telephone number. A woman’s voice answered. She asked my name. Then a man’s voice came on the line. He asked when we could meet. Two weeks later, I went to see an old man at a rented office on Nevsky Prospekt. I am certain it was not the same man I’d spoken to on the telephone.One week after that, I met another man at a café on Sadovaya Street. These men always seemed different and the same, like dominoes. They worked for the state. They asked me questions about my work, about its commercial potential, about Bolshevism. My answers seemed to please them. I met yet another man, this one short, very short, like a doll. He met me in a train carriage at Moskovsky Station. We were the only people on the train, which idled on the track. He had a table lamp in the carriage, and a small desk, like a doll’s. It was not until I left, stepping from doorway to platform, that the train pulled away. It took the small man with it. He had asked me questions in Russian, Italian, French, English and German. I had never learned any German and I told him so. He asked me about my family. “Are you close with your parents?” he asked.
“No,” I answered before I knew what I was saying.
The man did not seem surprised.
“Are you prepared to travel?”
“Yes.”
He said, in a voice like a circular card being slipped into a circular envelope, “We would like to offer you a new responsibility.”
In Leningrad that summer I felt so alone, standing beside Katia on the tram, sipping thin stew at my parents’ apartment, wandering up to the Physico-Technical Institute, where I no longer had a lab. Even attending a lecture with a pretty student, an admirer, and strolling in Alexander Garden. Children rushed by me, officials clambered into a carriage, squirrels darted, a line of soldiers filed past the flower beds. The girl said something and I thought of Katia waiting for me. The sun refused to set. All around, lives were going on. I watched water pour out from the fountain and into the drain.
The men from the government called me a beacon for the Soviet people. They called me an adept.
These were not the same sort of people who had worked under Lenin. This was a different time. Our Dear Father, Iosif Vissarionovich, boomed from the wireless sets now, and when I’d met his generals, earlier that summer, they had been interested only in whether my distance-vision technology could be implemented, immediately, at our borders. All matters were reduced to directives, simple prescriptives.
Our country needs your help
, they said.
Our country needs you to travel to Western nations, arranging demonstrations, forming companies, filing patents, inking trade agreements. These contracts will allow Mother Russia to increase its influence, to diversify its investments, to multiply its channels of information and trade
. They explained all this. These different and same men looked at me with hooded eyes. On my next trip, they said, they would send me a handler. I practised
chi sao
, watching my partner, sensing my partner, moving with his movements. I walked in Alexander Garden with the pretty student. These men asked me, “Would you like to be a hero?”
A FEW YEARS LATER I sat with Mr Thorogood from RCA as he asked, “Would you like to be a millionaire?”
He opened his attaché case and I saw that it was almost empty. It contained two copies of a contract, which he
chi sao
, the hand dance, standing with partners and moving, always remaining wrist to wrist, flowing and following, sensitive. But I had no sensitivity that evening. I kept losing my position. I kept seeing, in my mind’s eye, my typewritten name.
That night, I called the telephone number. A woman’s voice answered. She asked my name. Then a man’s voice came on the line. He asked when we could meet. Two weeks later, I went to see an old man at a rented office on Nevsky Prospekt. I am certain it was not the same man I’d spoken to on the telephone.One week after that, I met another man at a café on Sadovaya Street. These men always seemed different and the same, like dominoes. They worked for the state. They asked me questions about my work, about its commercial potential, about Bolshevism. My answers seemed to please them. I met yet another man, this one short, very short, like a doll. He met me in a train carriage at Moskovsky Station. We were the only people on the train, which idled on the track. He had a table lamp in the carriage, and a small desk, like a doll’s. It was not until I left, stepping from doorway to platform, that the train pulled away. It took the small man with it. He had asked me questions in Russian, Italian, French, English and German. I had never learned any German and I told him so. He asked me about my family. “Are you close with your parents?” he asked.
“No,” I answered before I knew what I was saying.
The man did not seem surprised.
“Are you prepared to travel?”
“Yes.”
He said, in a voice like a circular card being slipped into a circular envelope, “We would like to offer you a new responsibility.”
In Leningrad that summer I felt so alone, standing beside Katia on the tram, sipping thin stew at my parents’ apartment, wandering up to the Physico-Technical Institute, where I no longer had a lab. Even attending a lecture with a pretty student, an admirer, and strolling in Alexander Garden. Children rushed by me, officials clambered into a carriage, squirrels darted, a line of soldiers filed past the flower beds. The girl said something and I thought of Katia waiting for me. The sun refused to set. All around, lives were going on. I watched water pour out from the fountain and into the drain.
The men from the government called me a beacon for the Soviet people. They called me an adept.
These were not the same sort of people who had worked under Lenin. This was a different time. Our Dear Father, Iosif Vissarionovich, boomed from the wireless sets now, and when I’d met his generals, earlier that summer, they had been interested only in whether my distance-vision technology could be implemented, immediately, at our borders. All matters were reduced to directives, simple prescriptives.
Our country needs your help
, they said.
Our country needs you to travel to Western nations, arranging demonstrations, forming companies, filing patents, inking trade agreements. These contracts will allow Mother Russia to increase its influence, to diversify its investments, to multiply its channels of information and trade
. They explained all this. These different and same men looked at me with hooded eyes. On my next trip, they said, they would send me a handler. I practised
chi sao
, watching my partner, sensing my partner, moving with his movements. I walked in Alexander Garden with the pretty student. These men asked me, “Would you like to be a hero?”
A FEW YEARS LATER I sat with Mr Thorogood from RCA as he asked, “Would you like to be a millionaire?”
He opened his attaché case and I saw that it was almost empty. It contained two copies of a contract, which he
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