was out of the question. They spiralled off into lopsided shapes that had nothing in common with the conception in his head. So the Potter paced: the attic, the bedroom, the corridor, the streets around the apartment building in which he lived.
Nine days after his last session with Oskar, the Potter was prowling around the attic when he heard the phone ringing underfoot. He raced downstairs, but Svetochka beat him to it. "I understand," she was saying into the mouthpiece. Her posture was rigid, her face frozen in an expression of a sullen child. "We will both be there. You will be able to set your watch by our arrival."
The call turned out to be a summons from the Deputy Assistant Procurator's office for a groundbreaking session. Svetochka astonished the Potter by scrubbing every trace of makeup off her face, wearing her lowest heels and her drabbest clothes-until it dawned on him that it was her idea of how to impress Deputy Assistant Procurators with one's innocence. At the interview, Svetochka rose to the occasion and denied everything, starting with her age. "I happen, Comrade Procurator." she announced, baring teeth that looked as ii they had been sharpened, "to be twenty-nine years of age, and not thirty-one."
The Deputy Assistant Procurator peered at a photocopy of her internal passport through a magnifying glass. "It says here in black and white that you were born in . . ."He read off a month and a year. "Subtract that from today"-he began counting on his fingers- "and you are left with thirty-one.'
Svetochka's jaw angled up in displeasure. "The woman who issued me the passport wore thick eyeglasses. She made an error when she copied the date off my birth certificate."
"And where, if I may make so bold as to pose the question"-the Potter recognized this as a standard bureaucratic effort at irony-"is this, eh, birth certificate?"
"My mother had it."
"And where"-bureaucratic exasperation now-"is your mother?"
"In a coffin, underground, in row seven, aisle D of the municipal cemetery of Smolensk."
"I see," moaned the Deputy Assistant Procurator, though of course he didn't see at all. For thanks to Svetochka, he got so bogged down with inconsequential matters (height, weight, color of eyes, Party background, education, date of marriage, et cetera, et cetera) that he had to schedule a second session to attack the question of pilfering from the warehouse of a state institution. And by that time, Oskar had gotten back to them.
He called from a public phone one midnight. So: if the Potter would go down to the corner, a taxi would pick him up. Do you know what time it is? the Potter asked, relieved to have finally heard from Oskar but anxious, for tactical reasons, not to let him know it. Ignoring the question, Oskar said only that the Potter was to bring his wife with him, yes? Why bring my wife? the Potter was on the verge of demanding, but Oskar had clicked oft the line.
Svetochka relished the envious stares of the others in the taxi queue when the first cab that came along refused even-one except them. The little man with shirred skin, the one who had popped up near Nadezhda Alliluyeva's tomb in the Novodevichy Cemetery, was planted behind the wheel. "Still going anywhere?" he asked, and he laughed a madman's laugh. He eventually deposited his passengers before a drab prefabricated apartment house on Krasnaya Street, a stones throw from the planetarium.
Did every site in Moscow hold memories for the Potter? When Piotr Borisovich discovered that the Potter had never been to a planetarium, he had immediately arranged a visit. Revolutions had been the theme of the day. They had served up on the overhead dome, as if it were a meal, the sky as it looked over Petrograd the night the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in I9I7. Then they projected the sky as it looked over Philadelphia after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, I776, Walking back to the hotel afterward, Piotr Borisovich had started
Nine days after his last session with Oskar, the Potter was prowling around the attic when he heard the phone ringing underfoot. He raced downstairs, but Svetochka beat him to it. "I understand," she was saying into the mouthpiece. Her posture was rigid, her face frozen in an expression of a sullen child. "We will both be there. You will be able to set your watch by our arrival."
The call turned out to be a summons from the Deputy Assistant Procurator's office for a groundbreaking session. Svetochka astonished the Potter by scrubbing every trace of makeup off her face, wearing her lowest heels and her drabbest clothes-until it dawned on him that it was her idea of how to impress Deputy Assistant Procurators with one's innocence. At the interview, Svetochka rose to the occasion and denied everything, starting with her age. "I happen, Comrade Procurator." she announced, baring teeth that looked as ii they had been sharpened, "to be twenty-nine years of age, and not thirty-one."
The Deputy Assistant Procurator peered at a photocopy of her internal passport through a magnifying glass. "It says here in black and white that you were born in . . ."He read off a month and a year. "Subtract that from today"-he began counting on his fingers- "and you are left with thirty-one.'
Svetochka's jaw angled up in displeasure. "The woman who issued me the passport wore thick eyeglasses. She made an error when she copied the date off my birth certificate."
"And where, if I may make so bold as to pose the question"-the Potter recognized this as a standard bureaucratic effort at irony-"is this, eh, birth certificate?"
"My mother had it."
"And where"-bureaucratic exasperation now-"is your mother?"
"In a coffin, underground, in row seven, aisle D of the municipal cemetery of Smolensk."
"I see," moaned the Deputy Assistant Procurator, though of course he didn't see at all. For thanks to Svetochka, he got so bogged down with inconsequential matters (height, weight, color of eyes, Party background, education, date of marriage, et cetera, et cetera) that he had to schedule a second session to attack the question of pilfering from the warehouse of a state institution. And by that time, Oskar had gotten back to them.
He called from a public phone one midnight. So: if the Potter would go down to the corner, a taxi would pick him up. Do you know what time it is? the Potter asked, relieved to have finally heard from Oskar but anxious, for tactical reasons, not to let him know it. Ignoring the question, Oskar said only that the Potter was to bring his wife with him, yes? Why bring my wife? the Potter was on the verge of demanding, but Oskar had clicked oft the line.
Svetochka relished the envious stares of the others in the taxi queue when the first cab that came along refused even-one except them. The little man with shirred skin, the one who had popped up near Nadezhda Alliluyeva's tomb in the Novodevichy Cemetery, was planted behind the wheel. "Still going anywhere?" he asked, and he laughed a madman's laugh. He eventually deposited his passengers before a drab prefabricated apartment house on Krasnaya Street, a stones throw from the planetarium.
Did every site in Moscow hold memories for the Potter? When Piotr Borisovich discovered that the Potter had never been to a planetarium, he had immediately arranged a visit. Revolutions had been the theme of the day. They had served up on the overhead dome, as if it were a meal, the sky as it looked over Petrograd the night the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in I9I7. Then they projected the sky as it looked over Philadelphia after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, I776, Walking back to the hotel afterward, Piotr Borisovich had started
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