He needed rest.
He turned the control several times, but the heating didn’t work. The cold forced him to keep his hands in his pockets for warmth, and there they found the piece of paper that Konstantin had given him before they parted. He took it out and read it again in the semidarkness: Ivan Zarko. Upravdom at 25 Tverskaya Avenue, Gorky. Konstantin had explained that an upravdom was a cross between a landlord, an administrator, and a building superintendent, employed by the state to manage the buildings that the party assigned to him. Jack carefully folded the paper and pocketed it again, while the image of a blood-soaked Kowalski appeared in his mind. He imagined that, by then, the customs officer who’d retained his passport would have sent it on to Moscow. It was only a matter of time before they established that it was false and ordered his arrest.
He looked at Walter, sleeping peacefully next to Sue, unconcerned about what had happened at the station or the danger they were in. According to Walter, it was highly unlikely that they’d detect that the passport was a fake in Moscow for two reasons. First, its tiny imperfections would be imperceptible to anyone unfamiliar with the new American documents. Second, they hadn’t retained the passport because they doubted its authenticity. Rather, they had likely confiscated it for the same reason Jack had been questioned at the Amtorg office in New York: the provenance of his unusual Russian surname. Furthermore, that the United States had cut diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union meant, in practice, that the Soviet authorities would never ask the Americans for his criminal record.
But those were Walter’s thoughts, not his own.
Still, he wanted to believe that his friend was right. And, now he had blat. He didn’t know how it might help him, but he had it, even if it had cost him a pair of new shoes.
He looked out of the train window. Walter had spoken to him of the breathtaking beauty of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the formidable walls of the Kremlin citadel, and the impressive expanse of Red Square, but compared to the decadent majesty of Leningrad, the outskirts of Moscow were a gigantic suburb of crude gray buildings, which, far from belonging to a state capital, seemed to Jack like a drab industrial installation, crammed with warehouses that had been haphazardly converted into homes. Walter pointed out that the most iconic buildings were still to come, but at this stage of the journey, all Jack could see were the silent streams of workers whose features and clothing were as gray and as dirty as the districts they wandered through. Finally, at 11:00 a.m., the train arrived at the old Leningradsky Station in Moscow.
Walter was the first to get off. He left his luggage behind, leapt onto the platform, and gazed at everything around him as if laying eyes on the sea for the first time. He smiled, his chest swelling with satisfaction. At last his dream was coming true. Yet for Jack, seeing the station brought no excitement. The same giant portraits of Stalin and Lenin were on the fa?ade of the train station, a carbon copy of the one he’d seen in Leningrad. The building had the same monotone bossage, the same Risorgimento-style windows, and the same central tower with its French clock, the ever-present five-pointed star in its center. Even the cold was the same. As far as he could tell, the only thing differentiating Moscow from Leningrad was the Muscovites. Wherever he looked, crowds of people in fur coats, scarves, and hats walked in silence like automatons whose routes, occupations, and expressions were inalterably fixed.
He noticed a poor woman, bent under a bale the weight of which even a cart would struggle to bear. She walked barefoot, asking for change without anybody so much as looking at her, while what appeared to be her children followed her with gaunt faces and frightened eyes. A little farther on, he saw two soldiers dragging away a crippled beggar who was blaming his misfortune on the revolution, a sign around his neck asking for money to help him survive the winter. Jack clenched his jaw. Too many people and too much poverty.
He was forced to look away. In his adopted role as guide, he had to be on alert in case any of his fellow travelers went astray, so he directed them as they unloaded their luggage, and informed his group that, as soon as they left the station, they would head to the Intourist offices, where those who didn’t yet have lodgings could make arrangements. For ten cents a head, he would help them do all the necessary paperwork. They all accepted his suggestion, but Walter approached quietly and interrupted him.
“It’s impressive how you can turn a little information into profit,” he chided him.
Jack took the comment to be the product of jealousy and didn’t bother to reply. It was true that his friend had provided all the details on Intourist, but Jack had offered to share the earnings with him, and Walter had refused.
“And I suppose you’ll charge them for taking them to the People’s Commissariat?” Walter added.
Jack remained silent. He hadn’t intended to charge them, but he couldn’t understand why Walter objected so much. Ultimately, he was providing a useful service that the American travelers could accept or reject with no obligation.
“You didn’t pay me for the information,” Walter insisted.
“You didn’t ask me to,” answered Jack, and in a bad temper pulled down one of the suitcases jammed into an overhead rack.
“These people have no money.”
“Nor do I.”
Walter grabbed hold of him. “But don’t you see, Jack? This is a different world we’re in now. In the Soviet Union, people share their resources and dreams with everyone else. And unlike all of them, you’ve been promised a good contract.”
Jack looked around him. “You know what, Walter? All I see them sharing is their poverty. As for my contract, you’ve just described it perfectly. It’s been promised. Just promised.” He turned away and carried on unloading the suitcases.
On the way back from the Intourist office, Jack regretted the way he had spoken to Walter. Perhaps the Soviet Union wasn’t the paradise that his friend had prophesied, but that didn’t make the fact that Walter had risked his life in New York to save Jack from prison any less true.