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

true.”
    â€œIt’s clear all right. So is the fact that we can’t let him operate in any undercover situation when the cover is off the brandy.” Blackford stood, looking down at his lanky, earnest friend—“Where’s my room?”

7
    The voice from the loudspeaker on the AN-10 announced curtly that during the refueling stop at East Berlin passengers would remain in their seats. Viktor Kapitsa turned to Tamara—they occupied the rearmost seats and no one, in the half-empty airplane, was occupying the seats across the aisle from them—and winked. She returned the wink, lowered her head slightly, and smiled. She wore her hair in a bun, but it flowed back loosely over the sides of her face, so that there was movement, and a ripple of light, in her brown hair whenever she raised or lowered her head. Her smile was both young and wise: and cautious.
    There had been just that one night when they discussed such matters as Soviet authoritarianism explicitly. It was after she told him yes, she would marry him; told him she would never have married any other man, if he had not asked her, and he had broken down with the joy that filled him, and they hugged, and walked and walked until the dawn came in that crystal night during the whole of which the snowflakes came down gently as sanctifying grace.
    He talked then about Vorkuta. She knew, of course, about his background. But graduates of katorga are disinclined to talk about it, except among themselves. Viktor, in several hours, gave her an idea, but found himself incapable of saying it all. She had heard him speak frequently of his best friend, Vadim Platov, and now he reiterated that he owed to Vadim his survival. “I remember after the first week, I made a very conscious decision. That decision was to die. That was when Vadim wrestled with me. He wrestled with me as desperately as if he had come upon me drowning in the middle of a lake and was determined to bring me to the shore alive with him. It wasn’t easy to do. During the work hours we were not permitted to talk, except at the fifteen-minute break for lunch. And at night; in whispers, in the barracks. Vadim took me on. He would force me to listen, force me to use my mind, force me to give attention to what he said. He clearly knew he was engaged in therapy, but he never by any word or movement suggested that I was fainthearted, or crippled, or anything but a human being, with a soul, a mind, and a body that could—theoretically—survive. It took a very, very long time. I came out of it in six months, though I was pessimistic even after that, right up until The Death. We used to play with statistics”—arm in arm they crossed the street, on which traffic had all but disappeared. Tamara knew about Viktor’s prowess with figures—“and the statistics weren’t reassuring. But Vadim had a way of putting it: ‘If there is one survivor in one thousand, there is no objective reason why you should not be that survivor. In fact, there are more than one-per-thousand survivors—so there’s room for me, too.’ I have to confess, Tamara, that if something had happened to Vadim, I am quite certain that I would have edged back to desperation, then lassitude, stupor, death. We saw it happen. Over and over again. They could have worn placards: ‘ PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB. I AM ENGAGED IN DYING. IT WILL TAKE A WHILE. PARDON THE INCONVENIENCE .’”
    He spoke then about his detestation of the system. “Stalin was certainly unique. There cannot have been two Stalins in the history of just one planet. Stalin in a zoo, that would have redeemed the socialist experiment. Stalin as chief of state: that is a condemnation of a system. But I have made up my mind, and you are the principal reason for it. I will never speak about the system. About Soviet politics. Not to anybody. Not”—he gripped her hand—“to you, after tonight. It is