VICTOR ZASLAVSKY
31
group of Central Asian language specialists who made literal
translations and got paid by the line. This threw up another obstacle.
Several copies of the text were needed, but transcription of Central
Asian texts was painful and expensive. The library owned a xerox
machine , but it was guarded like a bank vault. Two trusted com–
rades-the head of the copying department and the xerox opera–
tor-kept the two different keys to the machine, and both had to be
inserted in the appropriate slots for the machine to function. A
reader was entitled to ten pages of copy a day . Worse , to copy these
ten pages one needed the approval of the department head who
knew no foreign languages, certainly no Central Asian ones. Thus,
there arose the classic Catch-22: for permission to make the copies
necessary for the translation one had to first present the translation
itself. My friend removed this obstacle by those same gifts of the
grateful South; a good part of them found their way to those respon–
sible for the xerox machine.
That unfortunate day I met my friend as he mournfully lugged
a whole heap of poetry to the xerox room. Delighted to see me, he
begged my help with the xeroxing. "Two's company," he convinced
me and promised to reward me with a copy of a small book of my
choice. The temptation was great: for a long time I had coveted a
collection of Mandelstam's poetry,
The Stone,
not to be found for any
money . But surely in the end I agreed because Mercader made my
life a misery and I was ready for anything to avoid returning to
Room 88. Later Natasha reproached me for my complete loss of
sanity and self-control. Everyone knew that the extraordinary
powers of the copying department bred intrigue and denunciations
by the envious. Whatever the cause , as we approached the end of
our xeroxing several inspectors barged in - surely alerted by a
tip - and found us in the act : a copy of Mandelstam, a load of copies
of poems in unknown languages and no permit to use the xerox
machine .
The consequences were horrifying. A report arrived at my in–
stitute detailing my "breaking of library rules." To wit: "illegal use of
xerox machine . . . serious infraction against instructions concern–
ing
spetskhran
materials . . . attempted bribery of library staff. . . . "
There were other paragraphs that now escape my memory. Alto–
gether they certainly amounted to less than "treason" but sounded
worse than , say , "armed robbery." As the head of the first depart–
ment brusquely told me: "Lucky they were dusty poems or else off to
