Read Online Who's on First by William F. Buckley - Free Book Online

few hours before you decide if to tell Viktor your plans.’ You see, I have decided to defect. I wanted to know if Viktor was in the same mood. If he said yes, then I would have waited, if necessary for one, two, three years, to arrange that we should go together. But the official order to go to Vienna to take the six-week course with Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn on the telemetry gave me the opportunity I did not want to pass by.”
    â€œWhat was Kapitsa’s mood when you saw him?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t believe. We met together at six, at a friend’s apartment, then to a restaurant together, then walking over Moscow. He took me finally to the train. We talked, yes, about Vorkuta. And, yes, we talked about his work, his huge fascination with the physics of rocketry. But what he talked about most, what he talked about ninety percent of the time, was Tamara.”
    â€œTamara?” Blackford asked.
    â€œTamara—I can remember Viktor’s words—I have a good memory, you know, Julian—Tamara is ‘more beautiful than Juliet, more learned than Madame Curie, more gentle than the River Don’!”
    â€œYes, but can she dance?”
    â€œWhat?” said Vadim.
    â€œShe sounds okay,” said Oakes.
    â€œOkay! Viktor proves himself mad, crazy about his Tamara. He says to me, stopping right there, in the middle of Red Square, he says, ‘Look at me, Vadim’”—“Serge” himself recognized this breach of security procedures. He began again. “He said, ‘Look at me … Am I disgusting to a beautiful twenty-three-year-old girl?’ I took my beloved Viktor in my arms, and I say to him, ‘Viktor, you are thirty-six years old. Six months ago you looked like a corpse. Today you do not look thirty-six, that is true. But you have color in the cheeks. You have gained ten? fifteen? kilos. You are wise, you are brilliant, you are one of the finest men God ever made. If you want Tamara, she will be lucky to have you!’ Viktor was overjoyed, he was so happy—I could not even begin to tell Viktor what was my intention. But—we walked past Lenin’s Tomb, talking, and suddenly he winks at me and he turns most solemnly”—Vadim made the low bow of the Russian peasant—“toward the tomb, put me in front of him so no one can see, and does this with his middle finger.” Vadim executed the internationally recognized fico. “I whisper to him, ‘Do it once more for me,’ and he did—but that was the entire whole of the political conversation. If I told him I was intending to leave Russia it would only have done something greatly to hurt his happiness. Because he could not leave Tamara.”
    â€œWhat does she do?” Trust asked.
    â€œShe was then a technical assistant. She too is a physicist.”
    â€œAnd that was your last communication?”
    Vadim, well into his second brandy, was well into prolixity. It transpired that, as prisoners, he and Viktor had developed a highly intricate code based on numerals. They used to practice it, for distraction, hour after endless hour. No such code, of course, is unbreakable, Vadim reminded them. “But I sent a letter on my way out of Vienna, to the apartment of Viktor’s friend who let us use it. It was a letter to say thank you, and of idle chatter about what I have seen in Vienna, written on a typewriter. I made the ribbon to stick, and then started pushing different numbers, putting the ribbon on, and off, as if to be fixing the ribbon. Then at the closing of the letter I asked my friend please to pass it along to Viktor. No one yet knew of my defecting. What I typed in our special code was: ‘My dear Viktor: I do what I do because I must. I shall not write you in case you suffer more, and do not write to me. Always your devoted …’” This time he paused. “I gave my name.”
    â€œDid he marry Tamara?” Oakes asked.
    Trust