Orchestra by Vladimir Gonik

Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia

ORCHESTRA

by Vladimir Gonik Translated from the Russian by Christopher Culver Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia Editing by Richard Coombes Proofreading by Michael Wharton and Jonathan Campion Publishers Maxim Hodak & Max Mendor © 2021, Vladimir Gonik © 2021, Glagoslav Publications

www.glagoslav.com ISBN: 978-1-912894-39-0 First published in English by Glagoslav Publications in January 2021 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Translated from the Russian by Christopher Culver

Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia

GLAG O S LAV P U B LIC A T I O NS

CONTENTS 1

. . . . . . . . . . . .

8

26 . . . . . . . . . . 284

2 . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

27

. . . . . . . . .

299

3

. . . . . . . . . . .

22

28

. . . . . . . . . .

310

4

. . . . . . . . . . .

32

29 . . . . . . . . . . 327

5

. . . . . . . . . . .

42

30 . . . . . . . . . . 339

6 . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

31

. . . . . . . . . .

7 . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

32

. . . . . . . . . . 365

8 . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

33

. . . . . . . . . . 374

9 . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

34 . . . . . . . . . . 389

10 . . . . . . . . . . . 89

35

11

. . . . . . . . . . .

96

36

. . . . . . . . .

412

12

. . . . . . . . . .

110

37

. . . . . . . . .

422

13 . . . . . . . . . . . 125

38

. . . . . . . . .

437

14 . . . . . . . . . . 140

39

. . . . . . . . .

445

15 . . . . . . . . . . 154

40

. . . . . . . . .

458

16

. . . . . . . . . . 166

41 . . . . . . . . . . 465

17

. . . . . . . . . . 178

42 . . . . . . . . . . 475

18

. . . . . . . . . .

191

43 . . . . . . . . . 490

19

. . . . . . . . . . 202

352

. . . . . . . . . . 399

44 .

. . . . . . . . . 503

20 . . . . . . . . . . 213

45 . . . . . . . . . . 513

21

. . . . . . . . . . 225

46

22

. . . . . . . . . . 237

47 . . . . . . . . . . 537

23

. . . . . . . . . .

249

48 . . . . . . . . . . 550

. . . . . . . . . .

523

24 . . . . . . . . . . 263

49

25

50 . . . . . . . . . . 560

. . . . . . . . . . 272

. . . . . . . . . .

555

Day turns into night As we journey through space.

Chance, groping its way along, Risks flashing into reality. an unknown twentieth-century Russian poet

The power of coincidence pervades all and subjects everything to it. a personal observation

1 The ways of chance amaze me. How can one comprehend its power, its vagaries, its greatness and caprice, its waywardness and willfulness, its sheer implausibility? Like a mischievous youngster, chance acknowledges no laws, cares little what people want, and only rarely bows before the inevitable course of events.

Division X received a visit from one Captain Shilin, a military pilot and an undisputed and unrivaled ace, one capable – unlike most of the population – of flying a military aircraft at high speed at a significant altitude. It was early March, when winter was still in full swing and was not yet thinking of letting up, had not yet given a nod in the direction of spring. Someone who had completely lost track of time would have been quite unable to tell what month it was from the weather outside: frost, snowdrifts; proper winter.

A keen eye would nevertheless be able to make out where the snow had settled and darkened, where moist depressions had formed in the snowdrifts around the trees. When a thaw was just starting, the cold air took on an elusive smell of watermelon and apples. Few city people know the airy smell of meltwater, renowned for its healing properties.

Country people know how it boosts one’s health and brings relief to a weary body. It is no wonder that birds and other animals rush to drink from a fresh patch of melted snow, and if you water wilted indoor flowers with snowmelt, they will spring up and grow.

This is not what Shilin was thinking about, however. If the smell of spring suddenly catches a man unawares in the wintertime, do his thoughts turn to the possible advantages and benefits of it? Does he find himself harassed by corrosive self-centeredness? The faint, barely perceptible smell unsettles the blood, weighing on the heart and mind. Hope awakens in the breast, growing stronger with each minute: we have survived the winter, and now we can live, and live well, until fall!

8

VLADIMIR GONIK

The pilot stepped off the bus, and waited for the shaky old vehicle to rumble off, taking with it its smell of rusting iron and the acrid fumes of gasoline. The bus gave out a moaning, screeching sound, as if it suffered from chronic shortness of breath and was aching in its worn-out bolts. The fumes and soot hung over the road, but as the decrepit old bus slowly vanished, the air cleared, and a boundless stillness stretched off in all direction.

Rare indeed was the silence that settled in. The highway curved through the fields and was lost among the snowy hills. The pilot stood, absent-mindedly looking out over the landscape, listening, and breathing in the clean, cold air. Tall trees grew along the bends of the river and on the slopes – black trunks amid the immaculate whiteness. The crest of the road revealed birch groves, and meadows beside the river. Further off, the river valley was walled by forest; the nearby hollows were lined with thick undergrowth, and one could readily see how nature would flourish here when the warm days came.

Where the pilot had come from, the landscape was depressingly featureless: bare fells, stunted and windblown forests, gnarled trees, impassable swamps, lifeless rocks, and tundra, tundra, a mossy wasteland without end or edge.

His garrison was located in the Arctic circle. The settlement there boasted few inhabitants or visitors: dull buildings perched on the slopes, featureless streets, pipes running from small boiler rooms, trash dumps, scrub land, and finally the airfield off in the distance, its runway blasted and hacked into the rocks. It was a stone’s throw from the sea, where no two years were the same: one year the bays would be frozen solid and passage could only be secured by an icebreaker; the next, the life-giving Gulf Stream would tame the bitter cold, warming the sea and cloaking both the dry land and the sea alike in an impenetrable fog.

THE ORCHESTRA

9

2 Chance had brought both me and the American colonel to New York.

We were both staying in the guest rooms of the Yale Club, a thirty-story building at the intersection of Vanderbilt Avenue and 44th Street, right next to Grand Central Station. These lodgings were meant for graduates of Yale University, though I, unlike the colonel, had gone to medical school in Riga. I was on a business trip, and the Yale Club had agreed to give me a place to stay while I was in New York.

It was chance that brought the colonel and me together. One morning I was taking the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor to have breakfast in the restaurant there, when halfway up the elevator became stuck and I found myself trapped with a tall, lean American, no longer young, but athletic and youthful. He resembled an aged Hollywood actor who had spent his entire life playing cowboys and sheriffs: gaunt face, gray hair cut short and parted to one side.

While work went on to extract us from the elevator, we exchanged a few words on our predicament. I liked the fact that he did not make a great drama out of our enforced confinement. On the contrary, he grinned, and used the intercom to ask how long our sentence might last, and could we possibly be served breakfast there in the elevator. By the time we finally reached the restaurant, we were like old acquaintances.

The maÎtre d’ assumed we were dining together and guided us to the same table. Neither of us objected.

As I recall, we were seated in a corner, and on two sides the table was bordered by glass walls, revealing a view of early-morning Manhattan. The streets were like gorges, slashed between the roofs and teeming skyscrapers, down below were crowds of people and an endless flow of cars, and everything was enveloped in exhaust fumes.

At the height of the twenty-sixth floor, small clouds hung, light and white, the remaining shreds of night-time fog, while far below us the city sizzled with life.

10

VLADIMIR GONIK

For those first few minutes, I felt uncomfortable, even afraid. All that separated us from a bottomless abyss on two sides was the glass.

Our table, with its checkered cloth, brightly-painted chairs, and the two of us seated opposite each other, seemed to be floating bizarrely in the sky above the city. Merely looking down made one’s heart stop from the height and the endless expanse. The emptiness was frightening, and my head spun; I was not used to this.

“I think we’ve flown too high,” I said, glancing down fearfully once more. “It’s time to land.”

“Maybe we should keep flying a while,” the American countered.

“I’m used to this, though I rarely get the opportunity these days.”

“Are you a pilot?”

“I was.”

“Civil aviation?”

“Military. B-17s. I’m Colonel Steven Creighton.”

My new acquaintance had been retired for some years now, and as we ate breakfast I learned that he had fought in World War II, in which he had flown a “Flying Fortress”, bombed Germany, and managed to get through a year and a half of the war unscathed. In the end, however, he had been shot down, and after a time as a POW he had served in the occupying forces, then later in Korea, after which he had gone on to command a strategic B-52 wing over Vietnam. After he had had enough of bombing, he retired. Naturally enough, once the war against Germany was over, the American had done what he could to counter the Communist menace, whether in Europe, the Far East, or Southeast Asia – in whatever place the Reds might choose to descend like locusts.

A Hispanic waiter brought me fresh melon, strawberries, and juices.

Colonel Creighton, like all Americans, started his day with a cup of coffee and a roll with jam.

“So,” I asked, “they sent you from Germany to Korea?”

“I volunteered to go,” the colonel answered gruffly, as if my question had annoyed him.

After the war, Germany was like heaven for the occupying forces.

Canned meat, a pack of cigarettes, or a bottle of whiskey could be traded for all kinds of wonders. Some of the men made good money, or even a sizable fortune. The post-war devastation created conditions which certain enterprising people found good for doing business.

The colonel did not argue with me when I brought this up. His reply was restrained. “In Germany we didn’t live badly,” he said. “The thing was, though, in those years we were constantly expecting war with RusTHE ORCHESTRA

11

sia. Day in, day out. They had Stalin and we had Truman. A fight could break out at any moment.”

“Who would have won?”

“Frankly, the Soviets could have grabbed all of Europe. Their tanks could have reached the Atlantic in a matter of days. We thought a new world war would start just like that. Our air force in Germany was directed toward the east.”

Waiters moved hurriedly around the floor. Now and again the elevator discharged hotel guests coming from various floors. Some of these found themselves turned away by the maître d’; no admittance without jacket and tie. Well, when in Rome… A jacket and tie it was, then, and only on Saturdays was one allowed to have breakfast in shabbier attire.

Soon the restaurant grew crowded, and a light hubbub floated above the tables. The two glass walls came together at the corner behind me, and the colonel and I leisurely ate our breakfast at a dizzying height in the sky above New York. In front of me and just to my right rose the sharp tip of the Chrysler building, while further afield I caught a glimpse of the famous skyscrapers of the Mobil corporation, the Daily News, and the Ford Foundation. Among the buildings, like a flying saucer, loomed the round dome of Grand Central Station at the corner of neighboring 42nd Street.

“You know, when North Korea attacked the South, we were shocked.

While we were still figuring out what to do, Kim Il-sung reached Seoul.

Just a little longer, and it would have been too late. I decided my skills were needed.”

Steven Creighton had piloted a bomber over the 38th parallel and had been lucky: his plane was never shot down. American B-29s hammered North Korea, and the front was gradually pushed back. Then the Chinese became involved, saving Kim Il-sung from total defeat. There were so many Chinese that the allies pressed up against them as if they were a living wall. The UN forces barely managed to restore the border between North and South. Yes indeed: a million Chinese soldiers proved to be a serious obstacle; even the American army and air force could not manage to demolish this wall, built as it was out of Chinese cannon fodder.

“In November ’50 we first met the Russians in the skies,” the colonel said. “They were protecting Kim Il-sung from the air. I remember those days well. We’d been flying almost without cover, and suddenly the Koreans started shooting us down. We figured out right away that it was Russians flying with Korean markings.”

12

VLADIMIR GONIK

“Did they shoot down a lot of planes?” I asked, trying to sound completely clueless in order to conceal my interest. “Were there major losses?”

“Yes, major losses,” the colonel bowed his head and fell silent, as if now fully absorbed in his memories; then he began to speak again.

“They had MiG-15 fighters. We were covered by F-80 Shooting Stars and F-84 Thunderjets, but their MiGs shot them down. We were completely gobsmacked. Our boys were taking off and flying straight to the slaughter. American taxpayers and the government had to shell out for new F-86 Sabrejets.”

“Did it get easier then?”

“It did, but things were never as calm as they had been before. We knew all the Russian aces by name. Ten or fifteen guys. We’d get warning over the radio when any of them took off. Everyone was on the alert for them.”

I knew that the Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps had shot down a large number of American planes in Korea. Well, war is war. Many of my patients from Division X had passed through the Korean school. In little more than three years, nine air divisions had fought in Korea, though our involvement had been kept carefully hidden. Now I had an opportunity to talk to an American pilot who had fought in Korea. Without any hurry or anger, we calmly, discussed these events from long-ago.

It was hard to say that any one plane was superior to the others. The MiG-15 could take off faster, it had a shorter run-up and gained altitude swiftly, and it would have the advantage from above. The F-86 Sabre, on the other hand, maneuvered better and could fly longer distances.

“What do you remember best from the war?” I asked, when we had compared planes.

Colonel Creighton thought deeply for a moment, then took his knife and fork and simulated a dogfight.

“You might know how counter-attacks work. The Russian could come swooping down from high altitude – up there, the MiG was the master. But at low altitude, Sabrejets had the edge. When we were on a collision course, closing speed could be 1,200 miles per hour. We were coming at each other so fast, the pilots had no time to react.”

“Now they fly even faster,” I remarked.

“They do. Every generation of pilots does better than its training.

Back then we thought a dogfight was the limit of what we could achieve.

I’ve got to hand it to the Russians, though – they fought pretty well. They had this pilot, Captain Nikolai Sutyagin. He shot down twenty-two of THE ORCHESTRA

13

our planes. All our aces went after him, especially our top boys, Joseph McConnell and James Jabara. But even they couldn’t get Sutyagin. Our commander, a chap named Colonel Harrison Thyng, set every squadron onto it in a different way, but no one could shoot Sutyagin down. I hear he’s already a general. Honestly, the MiG-15 was better equipped than the Sabrejet.”

I felt a certain pride at hearing that: the colonel had recognized the skill of our weapons designers. He was right, of course. The MiG-15 had been armed with two 23 mm and one 37 mm cannon. These were distinguished by their high rate of fire and precise aim, and they could penetrate any armor plating. The six Colt-Browning machine guns with which the Sabre was equipped were inferior by every measure.

In Korea, Colonel Creighton had flown a B-29, the famous long-haul bomber, which was equipped for night flights. Pilots would sleep during the day, go up at night to drop their bombs under cover of darkness, and return to base by dawn. The Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps gradually became masters of night-time dogfights, which led to a marked increase in American losses of B-29 bombers. A certain Major Karelin had managed to shoot down six Flying Fortresses on night fights. Recalling his name, the colonel grew visibly upset; clearly he had taken part in those battles and lost some of his comrades. He looked around distractedly, his pale eyes wandering around the New York skies, ringed by skyscrapers on this morning in late summer. I can still picture that scene in my mind now. A time that the Russians called “old lady’s summer” and the Americans “Indian summer”.

The colonel suddenly broke off our conversation and inexplicably disappeared, though physically he did not budge from his place, remaining seated at the table exactly as before. He was far away though, off in some unknown place beyond the horizon, his mind roaming in time and space. Steven Creighton was lost in thought, in his reminiscences, but I listened to the silence, tuning in to another frequency. This ability is something that the Chinese Taoists have, adept as they are in the wordless intercommunication of souls. In Division X we had intently studied the secret abilities of the followers of the Tao, which means the Way, and their teacher Lao Tzu, called by his contemporaries, all those thousands of years ago, the “Ancient Child”.

We were seated together in New York at a single table, but Steven Creighton was flying at a dizzying height in the night-time skies. The crew of his B-29 were working a little sleepily but still competently in the darkness dimly lit by the glow of their instruments. None of the crew 14

VLADIMIR GONIK

members knew what might be waiting for them. Abruptly, the skies lit up with gunfire. Anti-aircraft rounds could not reach the plane at that altitude, but it was obvious that the alarm would have already been sounded at the airfields, and the Russian pilots who had been on duty and waiting would already be taxiing to the runway.

The crews of the bombers flew calmly on, untroubled, but inside, everyone was expecting the Soviets’ snub-nosed MiG-15s to appear out of nowhere and pounce. The B-29 echelon kept a formation that ensured each gunner could cover his neighbors with crossfire, and while everyone held the formation it would be hard for anyone to sneak up on them. With time, though, the Russian pilots developed a dogfighting tactic that brought them success. First a wave of interceptors would rush in. The American Sabres and the Russian MiGs would clash, pairs of opposing jets flying all over the place with incredible aerobatics. Then a second wave of interceptors would fly in from different directions and try to disrupt the bombers’ formation.

It was never the case that everyone made it home from a night flight.

The Russian fighters merely had to disrupt the squadron, and then each bomber would have to fight its own battle, and fending off the enemy alone was not easy. Once they lost their formation, the slow and unwieldy bombers became easy pickings for the fighters.

In Vietnam, Colonel Creighton commanded a strategic wing and flew the new B-52. In the air they were covered by supersonic F-4 Phantoms, a plane which had just been introduced into active service. The subsonic MiG-17s and MiG-19s flown by the Vietnamese and Chinese were slower than the Phantoms, and the story was the same as it had been in Korea: at first the Americans felt safe and at ease in the skies above Vietnam, and at the high altitudes unattainable by the enemy’s fighters they would arrogantly comport themselves, completely carefree, as if they were the lords of the skies, conquerors of the heights.

No one would dispute that the strategic long-distance B-52 bombers were a technical marvel of that era. They could fly in any weather, they could easily cross an ocean and back, and their distance, speed, weight capability, and ceiling were impressive. The B-52 had no equal in the precision of its bombing, and furthermore, it was the first time a bomber had been equipped with rockets guided by on-board radar.

By every measure, the B-52 was a perfect plane, and when it was accompanied by F-4 Phantoms, it was well-nigh invincible. Not even the Soviet forces, let alone the Vietnamese or Chinese, were capable of opposing it. Later, when Vietnam had received the new MiG-21 superTHE ORCHESTRA

15

sonic fighters, and when the local pilots, slowly and with difficulty, had mastered the art of flying them, flying a B-52, too, became a dangerous job; the risks increased considerably. Later still, the Soviet Union equipped Vietnam’s anti-aircraft defenses with surface-to-air missiles.

The need for fighter planes was reduced, and they gradually disappeared entirely.

We continued to sit in the restaurant of New York’s Yale Club on the twenty-sixth floor, but the colonel was somewhere else. He had forgotten all about me; he was absorbed in his thoughts and said nothing. Steven Creighton was still far away in the night skies above Korea, above Vietnam, seeing his comrades perish, and he was gripped by the same fear that he had felt then, his world growing dark and his thoughts gloomy.

“Maybe it’s time for me to go.” I spoke up in order to bring him back to himself. The colonel glanced at me in confusion, as if only half-awake.

He looked around the room, apparently baffled, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. Then he pulled himself together, regained his composure, and nodded, as if he had made the entire journey back from there to here in an instant.

“Sorry, I got lost in thought,” he excused himself, and shook his head in shame. “Bad form to do that in company.”

“It’s no problem,” I reassured him. “I still don’t know whether the Russians actually fought in Vietnam or not. What do you think?”

“We all felt certain the Russians were fighting there, though we didn’t have any real proof. But the planes the Vietnamese had were Russian, and the way they flew left no doubt. They fought in the air like Russians – obviously the Russians had taught them how to fly and how to fight. We lost thousands of planes. And the pilots – what about them? If you weren’t killed, you still ended up a prisoner.”

“It wasn’t the Russians who started it,” I said, despite myself. I did not want to get into an argument. Petty arguments often lead to pointless hostility.

“North Vietnam started it, just like North Korea,” Colonel Creighton explained, convinced of the rightness of his position. “We couldn’t accept that, we had to get involved. Then the Russians came in as well.”

“Of course they did. Could they really have stayed on the sidelines?”

“No, they couldn’t, but that doesn’t make things any easier. We had to sort out the whole mess.”

I thought how ultimately the entire world had turned into an arena in which our two countries vied with each other. Sad as it was, our entire existence was stained by a merciless rivalry. Both they and we were sub16

VLADIMIR GONIK

jected to a brutal struggle, and everyone suffered. How many lives were cut short on both sides; how cruel fate had been.

Nothing could be done now, however. We sat there quietly, neither of us saying anything. The atmosphere around our table grew strange at the Yale Club restaurant, where the Manhattan skyline was right there outside the glass and the crowds of people on the street far below were like ants. The gloom that hung over our table was understandable. I even felt remorse; it was my fault that this had happened. Yes, it sometimes happens that undesirable events result, uncontrolled and unexpected, from a chance conversation between two strangers stuck in an elevator, who otherwise would never have met.

A punctilious waiter in a red waistcoat brought the bill, and we settled it – naturally, each paying for himself, as is the done thing among civilized people. Especially considering that I was spending money meant for official business. Unlike me, Creighton left the waiter a generous tip, but I was a simple Soviet man… No, not a prisoner, as the famous song goes, but I had been sent on a mission, and I could not allow myself to squander money, to carouse and live high on the hog. Now all that remained for us was to stand up, walk out, and say goodbye to each other forever. Nothing tied me to him; it had been a chance meeting at a place where our paths had crossed.

I said goodbye, left the hotel, and flagged a taxi. From the restaurant on the twenty-sixth floor, New York had seemed majestic and solemn, like a great big organ in a church, but down below, gloomy Vanderbilt Avenue resembled a dim subterranean passageway. At street level, the city looked anxious and agitated, passersby rushing along with exaggeratedly serious faces, as if everyone was worried about the exact same thing at the same time. Crowds of people swarmed around the entrance to Grand Central Station, where cabs in their black, yellow, and gray colors would fly in from everywhere and then speed off.

Among the passersby, from whom one got a clear whiff of the dull weekday grind, only a couple of young blacks brought life to the joyless scene. They flashed dazzlingly white teeth as they laughed heartily, making their leisurely way in brightly colored shirts and pants. With merry and exaggerated gestures they swept past us and then vanished, like clowns who had just been gaily performing at a carnival and then suddenly found themselves in Manhattan, among ordinary city folk at a random hour between breakfast and lunch.

I, too, had to quicken my steps, for before I flew out of New York the next day, there remained things to be done. On trips abroad, one day is never enough.

THE ORCHESTRA

17

After I had eaten breakfast at the Yale Club restaurant, I spent the entire day in various visits and meetings, and I returned to the hotel only in the evening. In the spacious lobby, with its striped sofas and soft armchairs, a porter and some messengers were standing behind a wide wooden counter to the left of the entrance, dressed in colorful uniforms and round hats. Here I met Colonel Creighton again. The bellhop had just taken his luggage out of the elevator, and I took it upon myself to walk the colonel to his car. We stepped outside together and stood at the entrance under the wide awning that covered the sidewalk. The colonel was waiting for his daughter Cindy, who lived in New York, to come and drive him to the John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he would board a late-night flight to Seoul.

Creighton himself, incidentally, lived in San Francisco, and usually saw his daughter each year in September, when he would visit her in New York or, more often, she would come to California.

The colonel’s son Michael was also a military pilot, serving in a fighter wing at the Misawa Air Base in Japan. Each year in late August or early September, Colonel Creighton would go from San Francisco to New York to visit his daughter, and then he would fly on to South Korea. As a veteran of the Korean War, Colonel Creighton was entitled to visit Seoul once a year, and he would spend a week there as an honored guest, with all expenses paid by the South Korean government.

Usually his son Michael would try to arrange his leave at the same time and fly from the island of Hokkaido to see his father. They would ordinarily meet in Seoul before the rainy season, though this year was an exception to the rule. This time Major Creighton had flown to San Francisco, the city where he had spent his childhood, and he had spent two weeks with his father and his childhood buddies. Father and son had then left for New York for three days, and that night they were to fly together to Seoul. From Korea, the major could easily return to his base on Hokkaido.

“I’m sorry, I never asked you where you’re from,” the colonel suddenly said.

I did not hide the truth. “The Soviet Union,” I answered.

“You’ve immigrated here?”

“No, I live there.”

“Oh, Lord!” Steven Creighton said, and slapped his forehead. “And there I was, running my mouth off! I can imagine what you thought of me.”

“No, no, it’s fine. After all, we were allies once.”

18

VLADIMIR GONIK

“Of course, of course!” the colonel nodded. Chagrin remained clearly visible in his face, but behind that chagrin one could guess at other thoughts that had just arisen and would not let him go.

Neither of us noticed a silver Ford turn the corner of 44th Street, jauntily pull up to the sidewalk, and stop sharply at the entrance to the hotel.

“Hi, Daddy!” A redheaded beauty jumped out of the car and, without slowing her pace, came up and kissed her father, deftly spun round on her high heels, and then opened the door for him.

The colonel meanwhile was frozen in a strange stupor. Only slowly did he come round, as if he had been pondering an urgent problem, seeking a solution for some pressing business.

“Daddy!” the young lady called to the colonel. She urged him on and danced impatiently on her long, slender legs. It was obvious at once that she regularly visited a gym to work out, went running and swimming, and in general paid a great deal of attention to her physique. I must admit, I very much admire sporting types, especially women, who take care of themselves and do not let themselves go.

The colonel, though, seemed to be somewhere else. He was far away from the Yale Club hotel, from Vanderbilt Avenue, from the city of New York, and from reality in general.

His behavior was indeed very odd. His daughter’s eyes opened wider than the door of the car, and she seemed quite unable to make any sense of her father’s strange demeanor. He himself did not notice her astonishment, and was in no hurry to say goodbye to me and get into the car.

He gazed absently about him.

Moving slowly, as if with difficulty, the colonel turned to me. “When are you heading back?” He asked the question stiffly and timidly, as if something important to him hinged on my answer.

“Tomorrow. I’m taking a roundabout route, though. I’ll only get back to Moscow ten days from now.”

“Are you going to Italy?” the young lady suddenly asked. My, she was uncommonly attractive. Her pure skin shone like fine porcelain and her eyes were dazzlingly bright.

“How did you guess?” I asked, in great astonishment. She had knocked me off balance; it was as if she already knew something about my movements around the world.

“It’s the Venice film festival,” she said, speaking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “I’d been planning to go myself, for my job.”

“Are you not going, then?” I asked, with a mixture of hope and a sinking feeling.

THE ORCHESTRA

19

“It didn’t work out this year. Maybe next year if things go well.”

Honestly, Cindy had stunned me with what was either female intuition or a lucky guess, or a keen sense. In any case, her intuition had not misled her. Her unexpected question had been right on target. Perhaps, for some inexplicable reason, Cindy had tuned into my own thoughts and could tell which way they were going.

Scientists in Division X examined the noetic symptoms that relate to intuitive understanding. We studied the nature of random guesses, coincidences, prophetic dreams and the gift of foresight. We arranged experiments, gathered statistics, and searched for natural laws. And now this young American lady had shown an interest as if she was experiencing a premonition of things to come.

Yes, I admit that I had business in Europe, but it was not about that.

When my superiors at Division X had sent me abroad, they decided to kill several birds with one stone. On the way back from America, I was to remain in Italy for a time on an intelligence-gathering mission. Cindy naturally could not have known anything of my plans to gather intelligence, nor of the reasons why I was taking this particular route.

Firstly, passengers coming from the USA did not attract special interest. Secondly, at the film festival it would be easier to disappear among the crowds, or at least to attract less attention. Thirdly, I would not need to fill out yet more forms, obtain visas, and generally be conspicuous at the border. Fourthly, there were material benefits: government accountants labor tirelessly to reduce costs, and if two trips can be combined into one, money is obviously saved. Not to mention that I had some selfish interests of my own, for if a person got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the Venice Film Festival, with the state paying for it, O lucky man, it would be foolish to refuse: Venice, the island of Lido, a hotel room booked, all-inclusive. Any way you looked at it, it was a dream come true. However, the Americans did not need to know any of these details. I had no intention of involving the Creighton family in my plans.

Meanwhile the colonel was sadly shaking his head and continuing to mutter, “It’s a pity I didn’t meet you before. A real pity!” His sadness seemed boundless, sincere, overwhelming, and inextinguishable.

He stood still among the rushing passersby, like a player unsure who to pass the ball to. Then he went on, timidly, as if afraid of being met with a refusal, “Forgive me, sir… But if you could… I know how ridiculous it sounds, but… there’s no other possibility. There won’t ever be one. I know it’s an awful lot to ask. I don’t want to trouble you, but please listen for a moment, I won’t keep you long. This is something that’s really 20

VLADIMIR GONIK

important to me. Afterward Cindy can drive you wherever you want to go. Please!”

His daughter said nothing; she was staring at her father silently, as if seeing him for the first time. She could not understand what was going on with him, and was completely baffled by his behavior. The colonel, too, stood there motionlessly, as if his fate was in the balance, as if his life depended on my answer. What can I say; we had been brought together by a mysterious whim of chance, but now it was I who had the power to move forward toward the mystery, or take my leave of him and walk away.

I glanced down Vanderbilt Avenue and found no answer there as it stretched away, narrow, gloomy, and sullen. To be honest, I failed to find any answer, no matter how hard I tried to look for it.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said in a rather guarded tone, without particular enthusiasm. I was now being forced to change my plans on the hoof.

“Thank you, sir.” The colonel sighed with relief and bowed ceremoniously. “You can call from the car, we’ve got a radio telephone.”

I called the place where I was being expected and put my meeting back to a later time. Meanwhile Colonel Creighton had shoved his bag into the trunk. We sat together in the back seat, and he placed a narrow case on his knees.

“What’s that?” I asked out of nothing beyond mere curiosity.

“A flute,” Colonel Creighton answered. “I play it sometimes.”

The car set off, the streets and avenues of Manhattan shining through the window. I felt a light dizziness, as if the reality around me held a promise of bold new experiences: my nose for these things rarely let me down. I frankly had no idea what was to come, what risk I might be taking, but better that way than the horrible monotony of everyday routine.

THE ORCHESTRA

21

3 Nikolai Shilin had come to the Arctic from Germany. In those days, a top student could choose his own place of assignment after flight school, and the newly-minted lieutenant chose Germany, the Western Group of Forces. From the airfield in Potsdam, fighters would occasionally take off to make interceptions, to fly along the border, or to patrol the air corridor leading to West Berlin. Naturally the entire territory was kept under vigilant guard. Radar operators had their sights on Europe, but they kept especially close watch on airfields nearby that were directed toward the east. A plane needed only to take off in an easterly direction and immediately Soviet interceptors would take to the air. Based on the guidance of the radar station – course, altitude, bearing – the interceptors would stick close to the target plane until it landed, or they would move to patrol a section along the border.

Of all the occupying forces, the Americans were the most brazen in the sky. The French and English behaved themselves, but the Americans would often soar recklessly, openly bullying the Soviets; they might feign an attack, or violate East German airspace in order to locate the radar stations there and determine their communication frequencies and codes, or simply to play on the nerves of their former allies and make them lose their cool.

One could hardly catch any sleep as a fighter pilot. The situation on the border of the occupied territory grew increasingly tense by the day, and the level of determination rose with each new order. Day and night, the squadrons kept a sleepless vigil, their ears sharp at all times. They kept watch over the sky like a diligent landowner over his garden. It often seemed as if a fight was just about to break out, a battle in the skies, but at the last minute the American Spitfire would pull away, as it knew precisely the boundary that could not be crossed without bloodshed ensuing.

At the airfield, the pilots stood watch, ready to scramble at any moment. They sat in the cockpit with their flight suits on, their fuel tanks 22

VLADIMIR GONIK

Dear Reader, Thank you for purchasing this book.

We at Glagoslav Publications are glad to welcome you, and hope that you find our books to be a source of knowledge and inspiration.

We want to show the beauty and depth of the Slavic region to everyone looking to expand their horizon and learn something new about different cultures, different people, and we believe that with this book we have managed to do just that.

Now that you’ve got to know us, we want to get to know you. We value communication with our readers and want to hear from you!

We offer several options: – Join our Book Club on Goodreads, Library Thing and Shelfari, and receive special offers and information about our giveaways; – Share your opinion about our books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores; – Join us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our publications and news about our authors; – Visit our site www.glagoslav.com to check out our Catalogue and subscribe to our Newsletter.

Glagoslav Publications is getting ready to release a new collection and planning some interesting surprises — stay with us to find out!

Glagoslav Publications Email: contact@glagoslav.com

Glagoslav Publications Catalogue •• The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova •• Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams by Layla Alexander-Garrett •• Andrei Tarkovsky - A Life on the Cross by Lyudmila Boyadzhieva •• Sin by Zakhar Prilepin •• Hardly Ever Otherwise by Maria Matios •• Khatyn by Ales Adamovich •• The Lost Button by Irene Rozdobudko •• Christened with Crosses by Eduard Kochergin •• The Vital Needs of the Dead by Igor Sakhnovsky •• The Sarabande of Sara’s Band by Larysa Denysenko •• A Poet and Bin Laden by Hamid Ismailov •• Watching The Russians (Dutch Edition) by Maria Konyukova •• Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko •• The Stone Bridge by Alexander Terekhov •• Moryak by Lee Mandel •• King Stakh’s Wild Hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich •• The Hawks of Peace by Dmitry Rogozin •• Harlequin’s Costume by Leonid Yuzefovich •• Depeche Mode by Serhii Zhadan •• The Grand Slam and other stories (Dutch Edition)

by Leonid Andreev •• METRO 2033 (Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky •• METRO 2034 (Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky •• A Russian Story by Eugenia Kononenko •• Herstories, An Anthology of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers •• The Battle of the Sexes Russian Style by Nadezhda Ptushkina •• A Book Without Photographs by Sergey Shargunov •• Down Among The Fishes by Natalka Babina •• disUNITY by Anatoly Kudryavitsky •• Sankya by Zakhar Prilepin •• Wolf Messing by Tatiana Lungin •• Good Stalin by Victor Erofeyev •• Solar Plexus by Rustam Ibragimbekov

•• Don’t Call me a Victim! by Dina Yafasova •• Poetin (Dutch Edition) by Chris Hutchins and Alexander Korobko •• A History of Belarus by Lubov Bazan •• Children’s Fashion of the Russian Empire by Alexander Vasiliev •• Empire of Corruption - The Russian National Pastime

by Vladimir Soloviev •• Heroes of the 90s: People and Money. The Modern History of Russian Capitalism •• Fifty Highlights from the Russian Literature (Dutch Edition) by Maarten Tengbergen •• Bajesvolk (Dutch Edition) by Mikhail Khodorkovsky •• Tsarina Alexandra's Diary (Dutch Edition) •• Myths about Russia by Vladimir Medinskiy •• Boris Yeltsin: The Decade that Shook the World by Boris Minaev •• A Man Of Change: A study of the political life of Boris Yeltsin •• Sberbank: The Rebirth of Russia’s Financial Giant

by Evgeny Karasyuk •• To Get Ukraine by Oleksandr Shyshko •• Asystole by Oleg Pavlov •• Gnedich by Maria Rybakova •• Marina Tsvetaeva: The Essential Poetry •• Multiple Personalities by Tatyana Shcherbina •• The Investigator by Margarita Khemlin •• The Exile by Zinaida Tulub •• Leo Tolstoy: Flight from paradise by Pavel Basinsky •• Moscow in the 1930 by Natalia Gromova •• Laurus (Dutch edition) by Evgenij Vodolazkin •• Prisoner by Anna Nemzer •• The Crime of Chernobyl: The Nuclear Goulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff •• Alpine Ballad by Vasil Bykau •• The Complete Correspondence of Hryhory Skovoroda •• The Tale of Aypi by Ak Welsapar •• Selected Poems by Lydia Grigorieva •• The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

•• The Garden of Divine Songs and Collected Poetry of Hryhory Skovoroda •• Adventures in the Slavic Kitchen: A Book of Essays with Recipes •• Seven Signs of the Lion by Michael M. Naydan •• Forefathers’ Eve by Adam Mickiewicz •• One-Two by Igor Eliseev •• Girls, be Good by Bojan Babić •• Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena •• The Grand Harmony by Bohdan Ihor Antonych •• The Selected Lyric Poetry Of Maksym Rylsky •• The Shining Light by Galymkair Mutanov •• The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets - An Anthology •• Acropolis: The Wawel Plays by Stanisław Wyspiański •• Contours of the City by Attyla Mohylny •• Conversations Before Silence: The Selected Poetry of Oles Ilchenko •• The Secret History of my Sojourn in Russia by Jaroslav Hašek •• Mirror Sand: An Anthology of Russian Short Poems in English Translation (A Bilingual Edition) •• Maybe We’re Leaving by Jan Balaban •• Death of the Snake Catcher by Ak Welsapar •• A Brown Man in Russia: Perambulations Through A Siberian Winter by Vijay Menon •• Hard Times by Ostap Vyshnia •• The Flying Dutchman by Anatoly Kudryavitsky •• Nikolai Gumilev’s Africa by Nikolai Gumilev •• Combustions by Srđan Srdić •• The Sonnets by Adam Mickiewicz •• Dramatic Works by Zygmunt Krasiński •• Four Plays by Juliusz Słowacki •• Little Zinnobers by Elena Chizhova •• Duel by Borys Antonenko-Davydovych •• The Hemingway Game by Evgeni Grishkovets •• Mikhail Bulgakov: The Life and Times by Marietta Chudakova More coming soon…