The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

I knew, of course, what it means. This was the new technique: instead of arresting you he just left the summons for you to go to the militia where you will be given the place of your exile. What a sadness I felt! I thought I am finished as a human being. I will never come back from the militia station.

I telephoned Robert and told him I must see him at once. When we meet he knows by my face what has happened and he at once begs me to marry him. “Your only chance is to marry me immediately,” he argues. “If it save you, wonderful. If not, you go to exile and I go to America.” By this time Robert had got his visa extended for six months and was writing free-lance stories for United States newspapers and magazines.

The next morning Robert took his passport and I took mine and we went to the marriage office. There were no flowers, no wedding dress, no nothing. Everything was frozen in me. I still didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do, but Robert kept saying, “Oh, darling, cheer up! We’re going to be married.”

Now they change the marriage office completely, but when Robert and I were married, there were only two windows there—one was for deaths and births and one was for marriages and divorces. The ceremony takes you ten minutes. “Passports,” the man say, and click, click, it’s finished. He fills in the names, the dates of birth, stamps the passports and gives you a certificate of marriage and that’s all. No witnesses needed. Nothing. We paid him three rubles and left. A marriage certificate is the cheapest thing you can buy in Russia.

Robert says, “Let’s drink champagne,” and so we went to the Cafe National the most fanciest, the most expensive cafe in Russia. It’s the only place you can order apple pie a la mode. And Robert say, “Now don’t argue; you are my wife now and we’re going to have champagne and little cakes.”

I had champagne and little cakes and I was throwing out all night. Happily for the bridegroom, he was not with me then. We had no place to be together. It was five months before we lived as man and wife and then we lived in one room that Gordon Kashin, an American correspondent, let us have in his three-room apartment.

But back to the summons from the militia. When the day came, Robert walked with me to the headquarters building and wanted to go into the office, but I said, “No, better not. If they arrest us both, who will fight?” Poor Robert, he was hurt by the Communists, I feel sure, more than most other foreigners, for he came so close to the bureaucracy and cruelty of the system. You know, you sometime read in books, the hero went pale. Well, I never saw anybody so pale in my life as Robert. He was gray-pale. Even his lips were pale. My heart wrings now when I think about it. I don’t know how I looked, but I was certain I’d never see Robert again. Only God knows how horribly I felt.

Nila Magidoff, Only to Travel! Only to Live!

219

We held both hands and kissed. Then I opened the door and the steps went up and I thought I’d never climb there. My feet were like stones when I moved them. I came to this smelly office and I showed my summons to a man sitting there. He said, “Sit down and wait. You will be called.”

Then I saw four more woman sitting there and by the expressions on their faces I knew they went through the same nightmare I did. I wanted to go down and tell Robert there is a line there and I got up, but the man say with such a roughness, “Sit down and wait your turn.”

All the woman was called before I was and what impressed me most was when a woman was called, she went into the next office and never come back, and so it was completely clear for me she is arrested and taken inside to prison.

Finally the man call, “Nila Ivanovna Shevko,” and I get up and go to the other office where they give me a long questionnaire. They ask your last name, your Christian name, your date of birth and your birthplace, your husband’s name and his occupation and so on.

Of course, they thought they knew my husband’s name and that he was already dead, so can imagine with what circumstances I wrote, “Robert Magid-off, American correspondent.” Then I handed in this questionnaire and in spite of my terror, I waited with devilish pleasure for the man to get to this piece of surprising information.

Ah, it was a comedy! He took the questionnaire with the boring look, for every day hundreds of people are arrested and fill these things out. Then suddenly his hair stand on end and I enjoy myself immensely. I know that even if this marriage to Robert will not save me, the NKVD will be most unpleasantly shocked to see I have an American husband working for foreign newspapers. I understand very well that at this time they don’t want an American to come so close to the real Russian life.

Then he jump from his chair and say, “Will you please sit down?”

I say nothing, but sit down very deliberately.