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PARTISAN REVIEW
that happened was a misunderstanding, a mistake, or absent-mindedness.
The General talked with Busch for an hour and a half. For the most
part he was very correct, but at times he would unexpectedly raise his
voice. After addressing Busch politely as Ernst Leopoldovich, he would
suddenly shout, "I'll shoot you, you dog!"
In
the end Busch got bored with trying to exonerate himself. He
asked for a pencil and paper. The general, sighing with relief, handed
him a fountain pen: "A frank confession could reduce your punishment."
Busch gazed out the window for a minute. Then he smiled and, in
an elegant sprawling hand, wrote:
Statement
1. I express my feeling of deep concern for the fate of the Baptist
Christians of the Baltic and Transcaucasian regions.
2. I call upon American intelligence to react swiftly to the abuse
of civil liberties by the Kremlin.
3.
I
demand the right of unimpeded emigration to my historic
homeland - the Federal Republic of Germany.
Ernst Busch, prisoner
if
conscience.
The general read the statement and dropped it into a waste basket.
He decided to employ an old and trusted trick. He abruptly got to his
feet and left without a word. He returned in forty minutes. What he saw
shocked him. Busch was sleeping peacefully, his head on a pile of legal
papers. The general would remember this later. "Oh, the things that have
happened in this office! People have cut open their veins. Burned note–
books in the ashtray. Tried to throw themselves out of the window. But
falling asleep! That's a first!"
Busch was taken to a psychiatric hospital. What had happened
seemed to the General a clear symptom of mental illness. And perhaps he
was not far from the truth. Busch was released after six months. Around
the same time, my life was changing, too. It's difficult to recall how it
started. Once or twice I said something out of line. I got into an argu–
ment with Gaspl, who was high up in the Party. Once I showed up
drunk at a meeting of the Central Committee. At a conference of
Estonian writers, I attacked my good friend Lippo.
To make a career in journalism, you have to have an endless store of
energy. To mark time or to rest means to capitulate . Obviously I was
not cut out for this work. I had skidded to a halt at a certain level, and
that was it. They remembered that I didn't have a Tallinn permit. They
