Free Good People by Nir Baram Page A

outside the bakeries at night for bread, and afterwards there wasn’t enough to go around.
    Without turning his head, one of the agents called out, ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, you’re an attractive woman.’
    She didn’t answer.
    ‘Comrade Weissberg,’ the driver said, ‘the scarf is suitable for old women, not for pretty young things. Could you show us your hair? We’ve heard so much about it.’
    With a rapid motion she removed the scarf and her hair slid down to her shoulders. She felt its coarse touch, like a dry scab on her neck. She was sorry she hadn’t wet it and combed it. The car slowed, and they both turned around. ‘Really pretty, Comrade Weissberg,’ said the driver, whose head was brick-shaped and amazingly small, like a child’s.
    ‘Very beautiful, truly blue,’ his companion said.
    She wrapped the scarf around her hair again. Their behaviour amused her. When you saw a black crow, it was hard to believe that two guys like that were sitting in it, jabbering like schoolkids.
    They approached the turn to Liteiny Prospect. NKVD headquarters were at the end, near the river. The street would be deserted now. The people of Leningrad avoided this building at night. It was called bolshoi dom , the big house, and was an inexhaustible source of horror stories, laments, tall tales and black humour—stories of secret corridors that went as far as Magadan, of so many floors that, if you countedthem all, above and below ground, you’d find it was the tallest building in Leningrad. Not long ago, when she passed by, she had the idea that multitudes of thin wires were stretched from it, and every wire was wrapped around someone in the city. In their houses, on the streets, in the parks, she would hear people speculating endlessly, reciting success stories out of the newspapers, and, every time someone approached, changing their tone into a semi-official way of speaking, full of empty pathos, as if they were talking, indirectly, to that building. So much weakness sucked the virtue out of people, diminished them, or, to be precise, the people voluntarily diminished themselves.
    She was especially indignant about the wearisome wait for the inevitable: could any of them doubt that Nadyezhda Petrovna would lead them all to their deaths? And yet they did nothing. The smarter ones, like Levayev, were distancing themselves from her, but could not make a clean break. The others dragged along behind, lamenting, complaining. No one did anything. They all preferred to fear, in the hope that the poet might still slip away from inquisitional eyes. But how could she? When there were so many eyes, and Nadya never stopped attracting attention and admiration, scattering poems about her that mocked the achievements of the party—especially of its beloved authors and poets. Hadn’t she devoted a whole series of poems to Gorky after his death? All of them—her father Andrei, Varlamov, Emma Rykova, Brodsky and Morozovsky—knew very well that the friends of an arrested person also face elimination or banishment, and they all have wives, children, sisters, husbands, lovers, other friends. Their inaction was endangering everyone…
    Somebody had to stop it.
    Instead of turning into Liteiny Prospect, the automobile turned south.
    ‘Aren’t we going to bolshoi dom ?’ Sasha asked the agents.
    ‘Did you hear that?’ the driver’s companion chuckled. ‘Comrade Weissberg wants to go to bolshoi dom .’
    ‘Are we going there or not?’ she asked sternly.
    ‘Comrade Weissberg,’ the driver intervened in a conciliatory tone,‘your meeting will take place elsewhere. When we get there, they’ll explain everything.’
    He sped up. She was silent, and the agents also stopped talking. Two planes flew over them. The agent in the passenger seat pointed at them with enthusiasm. The moon pierced the dome of clouds, and silvered the wings of the planes, which looked as though they were flying directly into it. Darkness fell on the road. She