“And what about me? How can I thank my new husband?” Sue smiled mischievously as she approached Jack, swinging her hips.
“Hey! That’s quite enough of that!” Walter laughed, and he moved Sue away with a kiss that did not prevent her from continuing to gaze at Jack. “For the record, I didn’t take kindly to that stunt. Why in hell’s name did you decide to say that Sue was your wife?”
“Oh, give it a rest, Walter. I’ve already told you three times.”
“Well, I do apologize, but since she’s my fiancée, you might have to tell me again!”
“OK, OK.” He stood to dramatize the story. “That Soviet official who interviewed me, he was mighty suspicious. When I informed him in detail of my old position at Ford, he seemed persuaded, but with Walter, it was more difficult. In the end, he reluctantly approved his application, but he refused to allow Sue to come with us. I didn’t know what to do, so when she whispered to me to tell the man that she was my wife, I didn’t think twice.”
“And, Sue, why exactly didn’t you whisper to him that it was you and I who were married?” Walter reproached her.
“I don’t know. I was nervous. In the moment, it was the first thing that came to me. I guess I thought that, as the wife of the indispensable engineer, they’d be less likely to make it difficult for me. You didn’t say anything at the time. And anyway, what does it matter? Don’t the Soviets advocate free love?” She winked.
“Huh? Well, the two of you can get divorced right now—we’re still in America!” Walter added, and they all roared with laughter.
To celebrate their good fortune, they opened a bottle of soda they’d just bought and warmed a can of sausages over an improvised fire of posters and pamphlets. Jack was hypnotized by the scene. Walter and Sue were a model of happiness. He couldn’t see himself, but he knew that if disillusionment had a face, it must be much like his.
“We won’t need these anymore,” Walter said, throwing another poster on the fire. “To the last paradise!” he toasted, raising the bottle.
“To the last paradise!” repeated Sue, waving her sausage.
After finishing his snack, Jack suggested making an inventory of their belongings, to compare it with the customs list provided by the Amtorg clerk, which cataloged the items that the trading company recommended taking, as well as those that would be confiscated by Soviet customs. The banned objects included everything from cameras, weapons, and musical instruments, to jewelry, toys of any kind, books in languages other than Russian, and medicine not prescribed by Soviet doctors. Walter noted with irony that the jewelry rule was unnecessary, for no wealthy capitalist would ever immigrate to the Soviet Union, while Jack wondered what would happen to a sick person with no knowledge of Russian who needed urgent treatment and did not have “Soviet” medicine.
As for the recommendations, the list advised immigrants, in addition to the relevant visa, to pack canned food, cookies, dry confectionery, nuts, warm clothing, winter footwear, fur hats, and tobacco. The Amtorg official who gave them the list also informed them that their US dollars would be exchanged for Soviet rubles at the border, which was of little concern to Jack, given that his cash reserves totaled little more than nothing.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. Where will we get the money for our travel costs?” Sue slumped on the floor, suddenly deflated. Her pout reminded Jack of a little girl whose doll had just been stolen.
“Oh, come on, Sue! There’s plenty of stuff we can sell here,” Walter reassured her as he rummaged through his belongings. “Let’s see. A nickel silver cigarette case, a wristwatch . . . Look! My Emerson wireless! We also have an old Underwood typewriter that works, I think, the pen you gave me when we got engaged, and my old bicycle. At home, there’s some furniture in good condition, and you have the vacuum cleaner that you bought when you worked at the diner. And you, Jack?”
“Same as you. Trash,” he muttered.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Walter turned on his friend as if he’d been shoved. “Just the wireless cost seventy-five dollars! All right, it doesn’t work, but I bet you it just needs new valves. And the fucking bike cost seven dollars.” He gave Jack a kick. “She paid twenty for the vacuum cleaner. If you add everything together . . .”
“Don’t waste your time, Walter. I’ve tried selling junk like this before, and I know what I’m talking about. Take my phonograph. When I went to sell it, they laughed in my face. We won’t get ten dollars for this heap of scrap. The only thing that has any value is the Studebaker, and it’s not ours.”
“Then let’s sell it!” Sue blurted out.
“What?” Walter couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“You always said your neighbor was an exploitative capitalist, didn’t you? So let’s sell his car. I bet he just buys another.”
“For pity’s sake! You can’t just put up an advertisement for a stolen car and sell it to the first sap that walks by,” Walter sputtered. “But it isn’t a bad idea. Shit! Maybe it ain’t! Let me think . . . Hang on a minute! Jack, you worked at a repair shop, didn’t you?”
“That’s right, but I don’t see what—”
“So you must know the right people: mechanics, taxi drivers, traveling salesmen . . . Maybe one of them will take it off our hands.”
“And have the cops on our backs? Are you crazy?”
In the absence of alternatives, Jack suggested they put aside financial matters and concentrate on organizing the journey. Walter and Sue agreed.
When they came out of the Amtorg offices, Walter had called an old contact to make sure that Jack’s fake passport would be ready that night. To avoid unnecessary risks, they decided that Jack would stay hidden at the printer’s while Walter picked up the passport and returned the Studebaker. Then he would drop by his lodgings to collect his warm clothes, spend the night there, and head back to Amtorg early in the morning to have their visas stamped. Sue, who had handed her key back to her landlady, would stay at the printer’s to help Jack with the luggage. In the morning, the two of them would go to the docks, where they would buy as many supplies as they could afford. Finally, Walter would meet them at the port to exchange their Intourist vouchers for tickets.
Having split up the tasks, Walter located the Linotype he would use to print a false marriage certificate, to which Jack thought he could give an air of authenticity if he stamped it with the Hebrew characters from the medallion that hung from his neck.
“It was my mother’s,” he said in a low voice, squeezing it between his fingers. “I don’t know what it means, but we’ll tell the Russians it’s a rabbi’s seal.”
Shortly after sundown, Walter cranked the Studebaker and lowered the window.