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PARTISAN REVIEW
my case, I felt relieved when I switched from the former to the latter,
which is alluring by the very fact of its short duration, regardless of
its outcome: prison or emigration.
I have heard many accounts of encounters with KGB agents,
and in most cases the teller of the story says he behaved heroically
or, at the very least, wittily. On the basis of my own experience,
however, I am inclined to doubt such accounts. More often than not,
they are merely an attempt by the storyteller to get revenge for the
humiliation he underwent. They remind me of the American comic
strip in which the brave little mouse, Jerry, is forever making a fool
out of the blustering cat, Tom. The trouble is that in real life a
mouse cannot successfully oppose a cat, no matter how brave,
inventive, or witty the mouse may be.
Humor is wasted on a
gebist
(KGB agent): you might as well be
joking with yourself. And such people attach no value to courage.
On the contrary, they regard it as an evil that must be promptly
eradicated. In this connection, I recall a conversation I had with a
gebist
named Yury Ivanovich Vetrov in the reading room of the Neva
Hotel in Leningrad. When he proposed that I become a KGB agent,
I politely declined on the grounds that I was too busy and, for that
matter, too unprofessional. But Vetrov interpreted my politeness as
an acceptance, and suggested that I choose a cover name. I decided
to joke my way out of the situation and, glancing to the right at a
magazine rack with photos of the Politburo members on it, I said my
choice of a cover name was "Brezhnev." Vetrov flushed and replied
that such a cover name wouldn't do. Then he glanced to the left,
where a map of the Soviet Union had been put up, and asked,
"Would Arkhangelsky suit you?"·
I felt as if I were inside an invisible cage, and I tried to shake
loose the bars that pent me in. "I'm not about to become your agent!"
"Don't lose your temper.
If
you don't want to be Arkhangelsky,
you can remain Brezhnev. We're ready to make a concession to you
on that point."
"But I don't want to be either Arkhangelsky or Brezhnev. I want
to go on being Solovyov."
"Okay, just as you like. We give cover names to agents for their
own good, not for our convenience. You see, lots of people are afraid
•Arkhangelsk is a large port on the White Sea.
