Let’s begin at the beginning, Kolya, though I really have no idea whether this ridiculous story can have a beginning or an end at all . . .

That year—1949—I was the unhappiest man on earth. Maybe in the whole solar system. Of course I was the only one who knew this, but then personal unhappiness isn’t like being world famous—you don’t need the recognition of all mankind for it.

So here goes. It was Monday and I was on my way over to the workshop with a bunch of veils I’d finished, when the phone rang. I fooled around with the veils to show I was still some use to society even if I was disabled—that’s what those workshops are all about, anyway—and I kind of liked dripping those little black drops of India ink on the cotton net. It’s peaceful; you sit, you drip, you remember the good times—drinking that great White Horse scotch with the chief of customs in Singapore, for instance.

So the phone rings, long distance. I pick it up. “Gulyaev speaking,” I say cheerfully. “Alias Sidorov, alias Katzenelenbogen, von Patoff, Ekrantz, Petyanchikov, alias Etcetera!”

“Forget the jokes, you reactionary jerk,” a voice replies. I turn quietly toward the window. I won’t be seeing freedom much longer, I can tell, so I’d better get a good look at it now.

“Be here in exactly one hour. There’ll be a pass waiting for you. Twenty-four hours in the cooler for every minute you’re late. And no faking temporary insanity this time, either. That theory of yours about the two Gauguins and a Repin disappearing from that actress’s bedroom by centrifugal force from the earth’s rotation won’t work. It won’t work! Capito, Citizen Etcetera?”

“I have to bring my things?” I ask.

“Right,” says this KGB louse, after a pause. “And bring some Indian tea, grade A. I don’t have time to shop. We’ll brew some chifir.”

The asshole slams down the receiver, and I stand there listening to the mournful beeping: beep-beep-beep, sharp little splinters piercing your heart. Then I yanked the receiver out by its roots—believe it or not, it went on beeping by itself on the floor for a whole minute. Like it was breathing its last. And why not? Our nails and beards go on growing after we die, right? Hey, Kolya, if I croak before you do—please God—you put an Era electric shaver and a pair of nail clippers in my coffin, okay?

But you know as well as I do—if we reacted to these official screwups like big executives or certain Jews, we’d both have had twenty heart attacks and strokes and colon cancers by now. I kicked the dead receiver under the couch. I have to rejoice in the moments left to me before I give myself up for Christ knows what—or how long. God, Kolya, I can still remember every second of those two hours it took me to get to the Lubyanka. They were some seconds—even the fractions of the seconds and the fractions of the fractions. I had to say goodbye to all those dear faces in my family album, didn’t I? And I had to get a last look at those free sparrows hopping around outside the window. I wiped the poplar-blossom fluff off the Van Gogh. I decided where to stash the gold and the dough. But fuck the utility bills, if you’ll excuse the expression. Academician Nesmeyanov, that great chemist, can pay for the gas and let Einstein himself pay for the electricity—that’s his specialty.

After that, I got everything ready for my return to freedom—set the table for two with the cognac bottle a bit closer to my place. It crossed my mind that there’d be a few more stars on the label after I’d done my stretch. One year, one star, hey, this brandy’s going to be Special, Extra Special — but even if it gets to be Napoleon I’ll get out to drink it. I’ll be drinking to my lifeblood with that sweet young thing in the white pinafore down there on the street, skipping out of school — she went into the bakery for something.

I didn’t bother making the bed. Why waste precious minutes, like pennies stuck in a piggybank? If things go right, someday I’ll have another chance to make it. Then I sat down for a moment like you’re supposed to before a long trip. Only fifteen minutes since the phone call. I said a little prayer. Switched off the refrigerator. Then I saw a bedbug. You know, I was going to squash it, Kolya? Then I felt kind of sorry for it. Excuse me, I said. I’m going off to Horror Country—there won’t be anyone around to bite for a while. You have my pity, you little living creature, for you were meant to live five hundred years and now you’re going to kick off prematurely. No blood ration, see? So I scooped up the little sucker and carefully pushed it under my neighbor Zoya’s door. That took another half a minute at least. Then I took the geranium out to the kitchen, packed my suitcase, and left the house.

Well, get this. I leave the house, I stand at the entrance, and I can’t move. I mean my legs aren’t weak, they just won’t move. Why should they, when you think about it? They can’t choose which way they’re going. The route’s been mapped out by Lieutenant Colonel Kidalla, and who wants to go anywhere when there’s no choice about it. I know, Kidalla said one hour, plus twenty-four in the cooler for every minute you’re late. But what the hell. No problem. My soul’s as peaceful as my legs. Lieutenant Colonel Kidalla has mapped the route for my soul, too—the way, the path, the highway, it doesn’t mater. You might say my destiny.

I went, in the end, but kind of without noticing it. Life has given me such a kick in the nuts, Kolya, I swear to God I couldn’t tell if I existed or not. Then some old bag jumps out at me on the street. Thinks I’m giving the Karpo Marx portrait in a grocery-store window a funny look.

“I’ve had my eye on you,” this snake says. “If you’re not one of us, you should go right along and report yourself to the authorities. Maybe,” this four-eyed cootie goes on, “you don’t care for the way the world’s changed? Then you’d better say so! Here and now! I’ve seen your type before—gutless know-it-alls, giving us the finger behind our backs, besmirching your enemy with impotent spit and thinking you’re such big shots!”

Then this old douchebag called me “a worthless good-for-nothing.” But the really terrible part, Kolya, was that she wouldn’t stop. She had to know whose side I was on. So I talked through my nose like I had the clap and told her my side was where the furniture was older and softer. I was headed for the VD clinic for a Wassermann test subsequent to fornication with an attractive descendant of native remnants of capitalism. I purposely spat all over her face; it occurred to me it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get busted for something ordinary like hooliganism—Article 74. But if the Cheka’s after you they’ll poke through every nook and cranny in the gulag, peek up the asshole of every town in the boonies if they have to. They find whoever they’re looking for.