Free Freedom is Space for the Spirit by Glen Hirshberg

 
    Vasily’s message arrived by telegram, and Thomas couldn’t bring himself to open it right away. His assumption was that another of the old gang had died. He settled on the red leather couch by the fire in his Charlottenburg apartment and held the envelope, wet from the snow outside, in his hands. Eventually, Jutta stuck her head out of her sculpture studio. She wiped the back of her palm across her dusty, still-sharp cheekbones.
    â€œGood God,” Jutta said, “is that really a telegram?”
    â€œFrom Vasily.”
    â€œObviously. He lost his cell phone somewhere?”
    â€œLast I heard—and it was a long time ago—he still uses burners. He doesn’t trust cell phones.”
    â€œInternet cafés all closed?”
    â€œI don’t even think he has e-mail. He doesn’t trust that, either.”
    â€œBut he trusts his local telegraph operator? Assuming there are such people still in St. Petersburg? Or here? Or anywhere?”
    Grinning, she moved toward the couch, and Thomas had to fight back a momentary and selfish flicker of annoyance. Whatever was in the telegram, he didn’t want to share it, at least not right away. Feeling childish, he watched Jutta lumber closer, her hand on her swelling belly. She smiled at him, and the orange from the fire in the grate caught in her eyes.
    â€œWhat does it say?”
    In the old days, at the end of Soviet times or during the wild Yeltsin years—back when they’d really been doing something, when the art had been the moment itself and not the preserving or capturing or remembering of it—Thomas would have torn open the envelope, tossed it aside. But for this one—the first in years—he fished out his pocketknife, slit the fold, withdrew the folded yellow paper, and laid the envelope carefully atop the Gerhard Richter Baader-Meinhof monograph on the end-table. Then he opened Vasily’s message, and though Jutta could see the words—English words—as well as he could, he read them aloud:
    â€œHappening now. STOP. Invitation letter at Consulate. STOP. Hurry. STOP. FISTS.”
    â€œYou know,” said Jutta, “I’m pretty sure they don’t need to say STOP anymore.”
    Thomas nodded. “Vasily probably just liked using STOP.”
    â€œAnd telegrams.”
    â€œEverything about this.” To his astonishment, Thomas felt tears in his eyes.
    Jutta was standing right next to him, now, staring down at the note. “They still make us get invitation letters?”
    â€œIt’s still Russia,” Thomas murmured.
    â€œI guess,” said Jutta, and for a single moment, in her voice, he heard a hint, a suggestion of exactly the feelings he was having. And of course, that was only fair. She had been there, too. Eventually. He looked away, but Jutta’s dusty, strong-fingered hand slid over his. “Thomas,” she said. “Go.”
    â€œI can’t. The baby.”
    â€œIs due in three months.”
    â€œTerm. Classes—”
    â€œStart in two weeks.”
    â€œThis is Vasily. Whatever he’s up to could last longer than that.”
    â€œGet a cold. Get pneumonia. Your students will live.”
    â€œI’m not…” he said. Then, “I don’t…”
    â€œCall the consulate,” said Jutta. “Get Vasily’s invitation letter and your visa. Go.” Turning away, she threw a tiny sliver of soapstone into the fire; She has missed all this, too , he realized. If not for the baby they’d both assumed they were too old to expect, she’d have dropped everything and gone with him.
    In truth, for that matter, she’d have gone without him.
    *   *   *
    On impulse, and to save money, he took the train. And because he’d somehow transformed, right as he entered his forties, into a tenure-tracked Juniorprofessor der situationistichen Kunst who could almost afford it, he took the fast