Cockpit (3 page)

I woke to find a blurred face hovering over me. Slowly it began to come into focus. I pulled off the oxygen and as I was inhaling warm air I became aware that my lungs had resumed their natural rhythm. A disembodied voice explained that I had suffered an uncommon reaction to the anesthetic and that I had survived after my heart stopped only because the incident had happened in a clinic.
Thanks to the State’s sophisticated medical equipment, my vital functions had been restored.

I was kept in the clinic for a few days, then dismissed, feeling shaky and humiliated. Like the elusive substance that had once healed my wound, now the State had saved me without my consent.

Most people surrendered their lives to the State’s omnipresence. I could not deny its existence, but I could abstract myself from its power.

As a prize-winning photographer, I had free access to the Academy’s darkroom. Among the chemicals stored there were cyanide pellets used for retouching photographs. I selected a single pellet and wrapped it in the foil from a chocolate bar to keep it safe.

I walked the streets of the Capital with the pellet in my pocket, as if I were a tourist, staring at grandiose government buildings, at the monuments erected to past and present heroes, at State banks, museums, department stores. Even though I was still at the State’s mercy, I mentally projected myself to a time when I would be free of it.

I had been fortunate enough to qualify for scientific training, an invaluable protective device which I planned to eventually turn to my own advantage. In the State’s eyes, I was its property. The State had even decided on the service I would perform to repay the cost of my education. According to the identity card I always carried, I was a researcher at one of the most important political and scientific institutes within the State Central Academy of Science.

The card not only created immediate respect, but granted me privileges not available to ordinary citizens. When I was stopped by the police for a routine document check, I would casually offer my card. They would salute and immediately wave me on, for, as minor servants of the State, they had been taught to respect their betters. My card enabled me to buy food and clothing at discount prices in
special shops reserved for top-level bureaucrats, to vacation in resorts closed to the general public, to eat in restricted clubs where State leaders gathered under the protection of security men. Yet for all this liberty, I sensed freedom only when my fingers stroked the foil-wrapped pellet in my pocket.

The State was a vicious enemy. Whether I escaped abroad or committed suicide, it would punish those who had known of my plans. What had begun as my personal challenge to the State would end with the destruction of innocent people, and I had no more right to destroy them than the State did.

I traveled to an ocean resort on the pretext of visiting a friend in a fishing cooperative. I walked along the water under the border guards’ surveillance. I studied the empty beaches, searching for a spot where I could hide long enough to launch a boat, but found none. Finally, I gave up, realizing that, even if there were such places, no craft could evade the police speed patrol or the State fishing fleet.

I considered learning to fly in order to escape by air. I enrolled at the gliding school but did not get clearance for a pilot’s license; instead, because of my slight frame and low weight, I was used as living ballast on the gliders. Each time a powerful gust swung our glider high into the clouds, an air force monitoring plane circled and followed us, ready to abort any attempt to glide toward the border. I also learned that even the most trusted pilots were permitted to fly planes only when paired off with a surveillance craft. As an escape route, the sky, like the sea, was closed to me.

The Academy of Science, my employer, was a mammoth institution responsible for all aspects of the State’s educational and scientific life. It was located in the Capital’s tallest skyscraper, referred to as the “Palace” of Science and Culture. Each one of the thousands of people who worked day and night in the Academy’s offices had been selected
through national competitive examinations, for their political or academic achievements.

The Academy was comprised of various different institutes in specialized studies, editorial offices of scientific publications, publishing houses and, above all, hundreds of offices that belonged to full Academy members or candidates, and to other scholars and their staffs, including research assistants like me. The Palace of Science and Culture was a Vatican governing the church of State.

Using the official stationery of my Institute, I wrote a letter to the Academy, stating that, since my research required me to photograph certain classified materials from the archives, a private room was essential to the completion of my project. For the same reason, I requisitioned a direct-dial telephone for outgoing calls, an item usually given only to senior personnel. No space was available at my Institute, so I was assigned a smaller room in another section of the Palace. Only the Academy’s Personnel Bureau kept records of room allocations; as I had applied directly to it, my own Institute was unaware that I had received the separate space.

Again using Institute stationery, I suggested that, owing to the political sensitivity of my work, new locks must be installed on the door. Because I was solely responsible for the room’s security, I requested that no duplicate keys be issued to the maintenance staff.

As soon as my routine was established, I asked for an after-hours pass. Usually, such passes were issued only to senior staff members on high-priority projects that necessitated unlimited work hours. However, since my Institute was often involved in highly classified research commissioned by the Party’s Central Committee, my requests were processed immediately. The room became my private vault. I brought in a folding cot so that I could spend the night there if I chose.

The Palace was located in the center of a barren square nicknamed the “Tundra.” Every morning, whipped by
northern winds that penetrated their inadequate coats, thousands of people rushed across the Tundra to work. From my room on one of the Palace’s highest floors, they resembled faceless extras in silent-movie crowd scenes. Yet, important as these people might look, their identity papers had to be checked at the doors of the Palace by the most experienced security men. Once in from the Tundra, the crowd separated into individuals. Some took express elevators reserved for members of the Academy whose offices were on the top floors; others were consigned to locals that stopped at every fifth level. Many visitors were not allowed to enter the Academy’s inner recesses at all. Others were brusquely directed to conference rooms and amphitheaters, while still others lined up in silence at the Postal Center, bearing written authorizations to collect mail for themselves or their superiors.

Every day on my way home, I passed the main ticket office of the State Airlines. Peering through the window, I could spot officials with their passports in hand, waiting to collect tickets to foreign cities. They had the drab, anxious look of minor Party and government officials. I speculated that the State found them good security risks, not only because they were leaving families behind, but also because they were considered too old to begin new lives. Once, one of them caught my eye and stared at me like an animal that had just picked up the scent of an enemy.

To leave the country legally I needed a passport. I knew it would be impossible to get an official Academy one, so I decided to apply for a short-term tourist passport. Before the Internal Security Police would issue me one, I had to present them with an authorized application specifying the State’s reason for sending me abroad, my itinerary and my foreign sources of maintenance. But once I had the passport, I hoped to trick the State National Bank into believing I had an Academy passport, for which they would automatically provide the foreign currency required for a round-trip ticket.

One morning, I was looking out over the Tundra as the fog lifted, unveiling a mass of swarming bodies. The scene reminded me of something my father had often said: that the whole country was an endless, bureaucratic jungle in which the brush and undergrowth grew dense and intertwined. I decided to turn that confusion back on itself, to make it work for me.

Afraid to trust my memory under the stress, I placed a large sheet of accounting paper on the floor and spent the next twenty hours listing in code everything I had to do if I was to leave the country without seeming to break the law.

I would need the services of four prominent Academicians in different research fields that frequently required foreign study. Scholars of this rank would have influence in the State agencies that issued passports and authorized tickets for foreign trips. They would also be familiar with the necessary documents and procedures.

The four should be able to judge my good qualities and be ready to justify my bad ones. Ideally men with Internal Security Police connections, they all would receive denunciations against me from my friends, enemies and State and Party officials. The four should send and receive mail at the Academy’s Postal Center.

Obviously, I could never find actual Academicians with such qualifications who would help me. I would simply have to invent four such people. I started by giving each of them a name, a title, and a unique, yet plausible, bureaucratic assignment.

At that time, no communication was valid without written substantiation. Because of government secrecy, few people knew what any Academician was actually doing, under whose auspices he worked, whether he was in disfavor or even if he was still employed by the State. In the Palace of Science and Culture, individuals were merely sum totals of titles, documents and dossiers. The power to impress the Academy’s seal on official documents was real and perpetual, but the person who wielded that power was often anonymous.
Because my plan capitalized on that anonymity, there was a good chance it could work.

I finished my chart, folded it up neatly and taped it to my rib cage. My plan was intricate and I knew I would often have to consult my map to ascertain where the five of us were at a given moment.

I had each of my Academicians officially apply to the State Printing Office for stationery with his new letterhead. Since they all gave prestigious promotions as the reason for their requests and filed the requisitions following proper procedures, the Printing Office filled the orders immediately.

The letterheads listed the four men’s full Academy credentials along with their titles and affiliations. I manufactured one member of the National Council of Humanities. Another was the editor of the
Quarterly Review of Current Trends.
The third was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Coordination of State Planning. And the fourth was a vice chairman of the High Commission for Technological Development and Progress, a man who was also the editor of the police journal,
Problems of Internal Security.
I doubted that anyone would question the existence of my men or their jobs.

I also requested rubber stamps and seals for these make-believe authorities, and had them shipped to the Academy’s Postal Center. I made a separate visit to collect each Academician’s order, presenting the appropriate authorization, which I wrote on my Institute’s stationery, to a different staffer each time. By the end of the week, the stationery, stamps and seals of the Academy’s four newest members were in my room, safely packed away in boxes of photographic paper whose labels warned that the contents would be damaged if exposed to light.

In order to divert any future State inquiries, I knew my Academicians should have complete information about me. I spent several days listing every person and establishment
I had ever dealt with. Using the list, my Academicians sent letters of inquiry to all schools and institutions with which I had been connected, to fellow students, teachers, professors, ski instructors, neighbors, casual and intimate friends, as well as to my parents’ acquaintances. I had the letters marked “Official and Confidential” and sent by registered mail.

Two of the Academicians occupied positions in the humanities and the other two in the sciences. Academy personnel involved in the humanities received formal letters from my two scientists, while those in science heard from my humanists. Not only did this make the inquiry seem more objective, but it greatly decreased the chances of anyone’s discovering that my Academicians did not exist.

The letters stated that the Academy department listed on the letterhead was considering me for a foreign research scholarship. They asked for thorough evaluations of my academic performance, character and political allegiance, and guaranteed that all replies would be kept strictly confidential. I had my Academicians request that their original correspondence be returned with the replies. They also requested that any past or future inquiry made about me by other State agencies be forwarded to the Academy for reply. Since the Academy was the highest authority regarding politically sensitive material, any information gathered in a real State investigation of my life would be sent directly to my four nonexistent Academy members. To expedite the responses, with each letter I enclosed a prepaid self-addressed envelope stamped “Official and Confidential” and bearing the name and official address of the signing Academician.

During the weeks that followed, I collected dozens of replies. A former girl friend spoke of my sexual obsessions, which seemed alien to the Party spirit; a current one listed unpredictability as my dominant character trait. A professor with whom I had studied warned I could be a camouflaged
enemy of the State and if allowed to leave the country might never return. My parents’ neighbors wrote scathing denunciations, calling my father a reactionary who was openly contemptuous of the State, and my mother a cosmopolite, a remnant of the old regime. Some of the friends with whom I had studied, skied and spent summer vacations evaded the issue by claiming that I was too inaccessible to be evaluated.

A few professors praised highly my academic achievements but hesitated to give me political recommendations. Letters from the offices of the Rector, the Dean and the University Military Reserve training unit were accompanied by my academic transcript, with confidential reports by the university’s Party cell. There were several references to a police investigation of my family and me shortly after the Party take-over.