62
PARTISAN REVIEW
time I encountered some mention of it in the books I read. In one of
the plays of Friedrich Diirrenmatt, the Archbishop of Chernivtsi is
listed as a hotel guest. It does not matter to me that my city was use–
ful to Diirrenmatt only as a synonym for the bear's den of provincial
ignorance that neighbored Europe . Despite this, I would proudly tell
people, "And you see, in Diirrenmatt .. . . " Boll also referred to my
city in his novel
The Train Was on Time,
and not only in a single
word, but in a whole paragraph . In this novel Boll refers to several
other cities in Western Ukraine which I visited often: Kolomya ,
Striy, Stanislaviv. As if hypnotized, Boll's hero is obsessed all the
while with the idea that he will be killed somewhere between Striy
and Kolomya. I was touched when I read these names . It seemed to
me as if Boll 'Vrote his novel solely for my sake . I could well imagine
what death would be like in Striy. The magnificent Austrian poet,
Paul Celan, was born and lived in Chernivtsi. The city was his
impresario and the rough draft for his work.
It
seems to me that liv–
ing in Chernivtsi I could not help but love books . Perhaps there is no
other city in the Soviet Union that has a street named after Goethe
and a park named after Schiller.
While we were driving we did not exchange a single word . We
also got out of the car and walked toward the gray building of the
KGB in total silence . I found myself inside . We slowly climbed up to
the third floor . The one who was the oldest went into the office with
me. Another investigator was waiting for us inside . They asked me
to sit down . The investigator who was waiting for us stared at me for
a long time, then abruptly asked, "Well , Igor Yakovich, what have
you stooped to? What is it that led you to commit a criminal act?" He
aimlessly dropped on the table before me photocopies of
The Gulag
Archipelago,
a collection of social-political and religious-philosophical
essays,
Iz-Pod Glib,
published in Paris, and the prewar novel of
Vladimir Nabokov,
An Invitation to a Beheading.
'What? You think we
are going to play silence games? Start talking!"
They interrogated me for six days . At night they drove me to a
hotel encamped in the very center of Odessa . In the hotel I gazed at
the merry residents and tourists of Odessa. I listened to their laugh–
ter. I listened to the playful voices of the women, the insistent voices
of the men . On one of these mornings the car failed to show up , so
we set out to the KGB on foot. Again I walked in the middle . People
hurried past us on their way to work. Cars and buses flowed by . I
