ODESSA, 1953 1. Raya composes a letter to herself in the distinctive round hand of Samuel Marshak, painstakingly forging the signature and putting on the date. An assistant producer, she will leave tomorrow for a week in Moscow to finish casting actors for the shooting of a movie about belt reforestation, complete with song and dance and the requisite unending patriotic raptures. The movie will probably fail, as will the whole concept of reforestation. During the shoot paid actors undertake the planting of live trees. That wasn't anywhere in the contract. But what do you know--trees, once planted, grow in their own fashion, in accordance with the proscribed principles of genetics, independent of planning and ideology. 2. In Moscow the letter will be posted in a lidded navy-blue enameled box with rounded corners, a bas-relief seal and a snowy-white inscription: MAIL. Who knows whether the post office could tell that the girl addressed it to herself? What's the difference? Her namesake aunt and cousin will get the letter while she's gone, and will not, of course, open the envelope-- that would be uncivilized--but the Moscow postmark and the famous name will not go unnoticed. And then Raya will return and read the letter, written on double-sided, ruled composition paper, and immediately confide to everyone her amazement that Marshack himself would write to her regarding her amatuerish verses (had she composed any and sent them to Moscow). 3. All the same, one can understand why no one asks her to read the letter aloud, why the psychiatrist uncle watches intently, shaking his head. He, however, has already been relieved of his position as a way of combatting Jewish preeminence in science, and lives in perpetual fear of arrest. In only half a year, the first stroke robs him of the gift of speech, though his thinking remains clear (as near as one can tell), and the face remains unchanged, but for a drooping corner of the mouth whenever he tries to smile. . . In photos from that time they appear separately or in pairs in various combinations, but never once all together. The interior view remains constant as far back as before the war: an old armchair next to a veneered writing table, in the background, a heavy curtain embroidered with a Bulgarian cross. © 1996 Boris Khersonsky. All rights reserved. Translation by Ruth Kreuzer and Dale Hobson.