When our story began, the East-West relations were quite cold, although they had been even colder just before, during the years of Andropov and Chernenko. He knew the rules any "expat" in Russia had to know: never buy icons on the streets (either they are fake, or they are illegal...), don't change money on the street, at least not too often (it was illegal too, although profitable), and most of all, take for granted that the enemy is listening.
There was not so much to worry, for him. He was a man of trade, working for an Italian firm, with no access to technological and let alone military secrets, and nobody seriously thought he was a "shpiòn", a foreign agent. So he lived his life easy and tried to joke about the spy game. For all he said, it was all an "I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know"... A friend of his had wished "merry 7th November" (the anniversary of October revolution) to a totally empty room (it was his office, and he was leaving it for the holiday), and the following Xmas Eve, he had found on his desk a nice greeting card. Nobody knew by whom...
But the things could be more serious, and we knew about that. Every now and then, the American FBI arrested a supposed agent of ours, in the USA, and our "chekìsti", our "services", reciprocated, arresting some westerner in Russia. And if the westerner was not exactly a spy, so what, maybe not even our countryman in the USA was. Or maybe, in fact, both were spies. But they had NOT been arrested for that reason. Just politics...
This was what my man said. Most of the times, both "services", our "chekisti" and the FBI, were perfectly conscious about who, among the foreigners, was a spy (normally under diplomatic cover) and who was a harmless businessman, or a honest diplomat, or simply a tourist. The normal policy was to let the spies struggle for to get information, not necessarily "genuine" (let them know what you want they know...), since if you arrest a spy, another will come, maybe even smarter, and it will start all over again. To arrest and to oust a spy (if that spy was doing too well his job) could be necessary, but to advertize it was kind of "bad manners", politically motivated, and so the other "services" had the "right" to give tit for tat. At the cost to involve an innocent. You are not the only country with a "service" made of SOBs, he said. They all are so, or act as such. It's the trade. "Rabòta takàya!"
THe real point was, sooner or later, the same thing could happen in Italy. And then, maybe, an Italian "expat" could be involved. It was a possibility, it could not happen, but it could happen too. We had joked about the idea that he could EVEN be a spy, or I could be. An agent in charge of controlling him, or framing him, or even converting him to the Socialist cause... Yes, I'm a spy. One secret, one kiss. What can you offer to me? And he started to give me "secret" information which he had read on Italian media, and our "services" surely knew since a long time... And I gave him a single, long French kiss. Why just one? You have invented it all, I hissed. No, I swear...
But what if the Italian involved had been him? They could ask me, as his acquaintance, to help them to frame him. In that case, I should have had not only to betray him, but even to lie shamelessly. He, a "shpion"? Sure... "Podùmai", figure it out, not even if I would have seen him...
On the other hand, quoting don Vito Corleone, it would have been "an offer you could not refuse". The "Chekisti" knew how to be convincing. Very convincing...
"If they ask me to do it, I won't ", I saw him, ready to sacrify myself. The wife of a "Dekabrist"...
"No, you will do", he said, without even looking at me.
We were walking along Gogolewsky Bulvar, in winter. Snow everywhere. He had a blue fisherman's beret, a blue loden trench, blue trousers and blach heavy shoes: a sea wolf, ended up in Moscow by mistake. I was wearing a white "telogreika" (a winter coat), white trousers, white fur hat and white boots, and in all that white I seems even smaller han I was, compared to him. But I get mad all the same.
"If you wanted to offend me, you got it!"
"It's not an offence: it's an order." He turned to look at me, serious, hard-faced, concentrated, like a real Russian. "If I can give you an order, THIS is an order. "Eto prikàs, ponimàesh"?"
"Tak tòchno," aye-aye, sir, said a voice within me. If he wanted me to do it, I would have done it. But why?
"Why?" I asked. "If they want to frame you, they don't need ME. And I DON'T want to do it!"
"You're right!" He looked away from me and started walking again. "They could ask it to many persons. That lady who come and set up my flat three days a week, maybe..."
"That "bàbushka"? No, you said she is a good person..."
"She is. But if they tell her I am really a spy and they need a proof to get me, say, without uncovering their real source, she will believe it, and she will obey. Old generation. However, it would be regular, I don't pay her, the State do it. Even to keep me under control, that's sure. Nothing personal, I have nothing to hide, but they can't trust in my gentleman's word. If the State would need her help in order to get me in... She would do her duty..."
"And then, why should I do it?" I asked. He looked at me again with a smile. "Durachònka", silly little girl...
"Because if they asked you to do it, and you do it, I am in trouble. If they ask you to do it, and you don't, they ask another one to do it, I am in trouble all the same, and you too. Got it, now?"
However, nothing of that kind ever happened. At least, not to us.
That way to worry about me, to take care about me, even when we were only acquaintances, was one of his characteristics which my father liked. The responsibility, the dependability, the sense of duty. Something kind of military. All the other way, my man had never served in the army of his country, and my father knew that too. He was not a deserter of a dodger: simply he had been deferred for health reasons. And he said that he was sorry for that.
"Why?" joked my father. "Did you want to invade us?"
"And do you think we are so fool to invade you again, after what has happened the last time?" answered my man. "Never more!"
"You see," he told me, once, "I was sure to go, I got used to the idea... I knew it was not a leisure trip, but... Like a rhite of passage... What does not kill you strenghtens you, something alike... And instead, nothing..."
"But what would have you gained from that? Just to feel you a man?"
"A change, it would have been a change," he shrugged. "Do you know what the English lady said whan the Luftwaffe bombed her house? "Well, it makes a change"..."
I chuckle. English humor, but not so different from Russian one: how to laugh on your own disgraces...
"Why did they defer you? Hardly something physical..."
""Insecure personality". They were not sure I would have shot..."
"And would you have done? Would you do?"
"It depends on the target, I guess. Not you, for example..."
"Not me!" I laugh. Something like a strange compliment.
"Sure, I'm serious. Not even in case of war..."
"And what would you do to me, in case of war?"
"I would surrender," he shrugged again. "And then I would ask you to marry me, before they send me to Siberia..."
