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JACK LUDWIG
her she was contempla ting conversion from Russian Orthodox to Roman
Ca tho lic because, she said, " many Orthodox priests do nq t like J ews." She
had, she to ld me, invented a game. It goes, " Can you name five members of the
intelli gentsia who a re Russian and not Jewish?"
She looked a t me and laughed .
"Nobody could ," she sa id.
I asked if she had contemp la ted applying for an exit visa to Israel.
" I sympa thize with Israel, a lo t," she said, " but I canno t go there beca use I
am Ch ristian . In Israel I think they don 't like Christian Jews. Besides, I am an
abolitionist, like Lincoln .
If
I a llow them to collect seventeen thousand rubl es
of what they ca ll 'educa tion tax' I will be engaging in slave traffic. I'm aga inst
it. Is it no t a shame, this slave trade?"
She tossed her head like a young girl.
" I have a fr iend ," she sa id, "a member o f the Academy [of Sciences] with a
p rice of o ne hundred a nd fifty thousand rubles set on his head . By comparison
I am a barga in ."
T hough I had os tensibly been represented to her by my go- betweens as an
OK
tchelovek,
she had her own way o f testing po litica l trustworthiness.
" Yo u must," she sa id, "vote for Nixon ."
" If
he runs aga inst Brezhnev," I sa id, " I certainly will. "
" Do you understand wha t goes on here?" she asked .
"Of course," I sa id, " I listen to your taxi drivers."
"Most Americans are po litical idio ts, I think. T hey understand as much
about Vietnam as they understand abo ut here.
If
the North Vietnamese come
to Sou th Vietnam there won 't be o ne South Vietnamese person left there."
Some, I sugges ted, felt tha t continued bombing o f the North by the
Uni ted Sta tes might leave No rth Vietnam truly bombed, in Le May 's words,
back into the Stone Age.
"War is telTible everywhere," said Mme Mandelstam, " but we saw things
far worse than in Vietnam. Do you believe me?"
She saw I was writing her words into a no tebook.
" Hey," she sa id, "wha t are you do ing? I don 't want visito rs in high boots
[the secret police]. I am no t so anxio us to be a
katorzhan ka
[forced laborer]."
La ter, when I had , ev identl y, passed her test, she said:
" I don 't know if I am bugged . ' Bu t they have heard everything. I don 't
make a secret a bo ut wha t I think o f them ."
In the 1930s, when the fate o f Osip Mandelstam was one o f the darkest
mys teries o f Sta lin 's terror, Nadezhda Mandelstam wo uld have been con–
sidered the one person w ith answers to the obvious questions. When did they
fin ally take Ma ndelstam away? Wh y then? Did they brea k him before he d ied?
She cou ld have fi lled in the biographical blanks because she was Osip Man-
