“I could get you one,” Jack heard his friend say. He looked at him in silence and understood that he was at his friend’s mercy.
“The Amtorg offices close at five. Come on, honey, finish with that blusher—it’s a fair way to go from Long Island to Fifth Avenue!” Walter said to Sue.
Jack was certain that going to the Soviet trading corporation was a mistake, but he had resigned himself to going along with Walter’s idea.
Inside the Studebaker, the three of them went over the plan before leaving. Walter, knowing the Soviets’ interest in broadcasting the virtues of their revolution to the capitalist countries, would apply to join one of the overseas propaganda units run from Moscow. He would highlight his affiliation with the Communist Party USA, as well as his experience as a printer. Sue would offer herself as a librarian and sympathizer to the cause.
“And you, Jack, you’ll be my assistant. Since you speak perfect Russian, I’ll tell them that I need you as an interpreter.”
Jack pulled his hat down as far as it would go, and squeezed the iron paperweight that he’d hidden in his pocket to use as a weapon in case of an emergency. He remained unconvinced, but he had decided to trust his friend.
“OK. Crank her up.”
The Studebaker shuddered as Walter hit the gas. As they crossed the Queensboro Bridge heading toward Manhattan, Jack turned to watch Brooklyn’s buildings disappear from view. Then he turned back and looked ahead, trying to persuade himself that all he was leaving behind was the grayish smoke that the Studebaker kicked out through its exhaust pipe.
It was 4:50 p.m. when traffic forced them to slow almost to a standstill. Walter snaked between the mass of vehicles, swearing and honking the horn as though his life depended on it, until a delivery truck stopped dead and forced him to swerve. Finally, somewhere between the Flatiron and the Empire State Buildings, he parked the car. Sue waited in the vehicle to avoid a parking ticket, while Jack and Walter got out and dashed into 261 Fifth Avenue. Jack didn’t even pay attention to which floor they were heading to. His friend dragged him along, not giving him much chance to stop and think. They both took a deep breath as they waited for the elevator to reach its destination. When the elevator doors at last opened, they found themselves at the back of a long line of ragged creatures that led to a door with a plaque over it:
AMTORG TRADING CORPORATION
AMERIKANSKOE TORGOVLYE
Jack felt a tremor in his stomach. It was the second time he’d seen a Russian text that week. The first was the epitaph that he had commissioned for his father’s gravestone.
The enormous line did not dampen Walter’s spirits. He handed Jack an Amtorg pamphlet to read while he waited, and cut the line, ignoring the insults and accusations directed at him.
While he waited, Jack noted that the applicants in front of him looked much like the poor wretches he saw on the breadline every morning. The main difference was that, while few women went to the soup kitchens, entire families waited in the Amtorg line. He listened to the families chatting merrily about the beautiful cities they’d visit, the salaries they’d receive, or the homes they’d be provided with. Some workingmen clutched documents that qualified them as miners, electricians, or builders. A couple of them even carried their own tools.
Jack was surprised to hear that the Quaker family in front of him had sold its land in Illinois to pay for the voyage after some neighbors did the same and were now enjoying a new life in Leningrad. And that the woman with thin hair holding her sick child in her arms had been promised that the Soviets would provide her with the medicine they lacked in America. He was impressed. Men and women who had lost even the dignity of believing they were human beings smiled with optimism and held their heads high again.
To pass the time, he opened the promotional booklet that Walter had handed him, and began to read it closely.
Sue’s sudden appearance interrupted his reading. He was glad to see her. The young woman had climbed the stairs, and the effort had caused her face to flush red, making her glow with vitality. She took Jack’s arm as if they were a couple. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, but he allowed Sue to grip him while she peered through the crowd of people waiting in line. He explained that Walter had introduced himself to a receptionist and slipped into an office.
“And why did you come up?” Jack asked.
“I was bored.” She assured Jack that she’d persuaded the parking attendant not to give them a ticket. “Look, Jack, there’re even Negroes waiting,” she said, amazed.
Jack had seen them and had also been surprised. Yet the two men seemed unaware of the stares from the rest of the line.
At that moment, an Amtorg representative, squeezed into a suit two sizes too small for his large frame, appeared, and shouted out to the applicants that the office was closing for the day.
“We will see you tomorrow, with number assigned to you,” he added in a strong Russian accent.
Jack did not take the hint until the large man insisted that they leave the office.
“We’re waiting for a friend. He’s inside.”
“We don’t have friends in Amtorg,” the Soviet official replied.
Walter then appeared through a door and gestured to them to go in.
“Well, that is a shame,” Sue said with a smile to the official, and she pulled Jack into the room.
Once inside, Walter introduced them to a well-built man in his fifties with a serious face, his eyes sheltered by thick, wiry eyebrows.
“This is Saul Bron, head of Amtorg in the States. For all intents and purposes, he’s the Soviet ambassador,” Walter added smugly.
Jack noticed an expression of satisfaction on Walter’s face that he had never seen before. Sue let go of Jack and held her hand out to the senior official.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, and improvised a ridiculous bow.
“Right,” said Saul Bron, taking his seat behind the giant mahogany desk that dominated the office. “You must be Mr. Scott’s friends. Please, make yourself comfortable. Mr. Scott tells me that you wish to join the honorable cause of our beloved Soviet Union.” He indicated the portrait that hung from the wall behind him.
Sue nodded with a picture-perfect smile, while Saul Bron waited for Jack’s confirmation. At that moment, he was preoccupied by the stern-looking man with a large mustache who appeared in the portrait. He recognized the figure as Joseph Stalin—it was the same photograph he had seen in booklets at the printer’s.
“And you?” the head of Amtorg insisted.
“Me, too,” was all Jack said, with all the emotion of a waxwork.
Saul Bron cleared his throat, opened the file that lay on the desk, and looked over the document.
“Walter has already told me about Sue. With regard to you, Mr. Beilis, he said your parents were Russian.”
“That’s right. From Saint Petersburg.”