182
PARTISAN REVIEW
turned out to be a KGB agent, I wrote a novel called
A Little Bomb on
the Dikes.
(The Russian original is being published in the Israeli
magazine 22.)
Such trips abroad are useful in that they enable the Soviet
tourist to see rather more of his own country than of the country he
visits. The view that he gets of his own country, moreover, is not one
blurred by everyday impressions: he sees it in its naked essence,
without varnish or prejudices . The country is held together by fear.
The level of fear is regulated by the nation's requirements, but is
never allowed to drop below a certain point. Today, as I leaf through
my notes on the KGB, it seems to me that they were written not by
Vladimir Solovyov, but Vladimir Strakh (Fear). To a reader from a
free society, they will no doubt seem fantastic; but a reader from the
Soviet Union would see them as a boring, routine account of some–
thing familiar to everyone.
Recently, as I was looking through the May 4, 1977,
New York
Times,
I ran across the following:
Each person has his norm , his quota of fear, just as each
person can sleep only so many hours , then wakes up . I have had
my quota of fear. I have used it all up .
The words are my own, accurately translated by David Shipler,
then a Moscow correspondent. The next day, the Voice of America
broadcast Shipler's article in Russian, and I can remember how
much some listeners were stirred by my remark about the quota of
fear. But one acquaintance of mine said, "That's true. Fear does
have its limits, and it goes away. But only for a time-until a new
fear comes along. Then you start all over again."
I never had a chance to check on the accuracy of what he had
said: by nature I am a sprinter, and I can't hold up for long
distances.
One day I was complaining to a close friend about being
summoned by the KGB. "You don't mean to tell me!" he said in
exasperation. "Everybody gets those summonses-not just you. It's a
condition of our existence . But you want to be different from every–
body else."
Not so. It was just the other way around with me. I wanted to
be like everybody else, but I thought that I was the only one to have
had that kind of bad luck. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I began to
look through my friends' address books on the sly. And in almost
