wore a white shirt buttoned low enough to see the V-neck undershirt. A huge tuft of gray chest hair jutted out. I waited. This would not take long. Uncle Sosh was not one for casual talk.
As if reading my mind, Sosh looked me hard in the eye and said, "I have been getting calls." "From?" "Old friends." I waited. "From the old country," he said. "I'm not sure I follow." "People have been asking questions." "Sosh? "Yes?"
"On the phone you were worried about being overheard. Are you worried about that here?" "No. Here it is completely safe. I have the room swept weekly." "Great, then how about stopping with the cryptic and telling me what you're talking about?" He smiled. He liked that. "There are people. Americans. They are in Moscow and throwing money around and asking questions." I nodded to myself. "Questions about what?" "About your father." "What kind of questions?" "You remember the old rumors?"
"You're kidding me." But he wasn't. And in a weird way, it made sense. The First Skeleton. I should have guessed. I remembered the rumors, of course. They had nearly destroyed my family.
My sister and I were born in what was then called the Soviet Union during what was then called the Cold War. My father had been a medical doctor but lost his license on charges of incompetence trumped up because he was Jewish. That was how it was in those days.
At the same time, a reform synagogue here in the United States- Skokie, Illinois, to be more specific, was working hard on behalf of Soviet Jewry. During the midseventies, Soviet Jewry was something of a cause celebre in American temples getting Jews out of the Soviet Union.
We got lucky. They got us out.
For a long time we were heralded in our new land as heroes. My father spoke passionately at Friday night services about the plight of the Soviet Jew. Kids wore buttons in support. Money was donated. But about a year into our stay, my father and the head rabbi had a falling out, and suddenly there were whispers that my father had gotten out of the Soviet Union because he was actually KGB, that he wasn't even Jewish, that it was all a ruse. The charges were pathetic and contradictory and false and now, well, more than twenty-five years old.
I shook my head. "So they're trying to prove that my father was KGB?"
"Yes."
Frigid' Jenrette. I got it, I guessed. I was something of a public figure now. The charges, even if ultimately proven false, would be damaging. I should know. Twenty-five years ago, my family had lost pretty much everything due to those accusations. We left Skokie, moved east to Newark. Our family was never the same.
I looked up. "On the phone you said you'd thought I'd call."
"If you hadn't, I would have called you today." lo warn me?
"Yes."
"So," I said, "they must have something."
The big man did not reply. I watched his face. And it was as if my entire world, everything I grew up believing, slowly shifted.
"Was he KGB, Sosh?" I asked.
"It was a long time ago," Sosh said.
"Does that mean yes?"
Sosh smiled slowly. "You don't understand how it was."
"And again I say: Does that mean yes? "No, Pavel. But your father... maybe he was supposed to be."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Do you know how I came to this country?"
"You worked for a travel company."
"It was the Soviet Union, Pavel. There were no companies. In Tourist was run by the government. Everything was run by the government. Do you understand?" 1 guess.
"So when the Soviet government had a chance to send someone to live in New York City, do you think they sent the man who was most competent in booking vacations? Or do you think they sent someone who might help them in other ways?"
I thought about the size of his hands. I thought about his strength. "So you were KGB?"
"I was a colonel in the military. We didn't call it KGB. But yes, I guess you would call me"-he made quote marks with his fingers-" a spy' I would meet with American officials. I would try to bribe them. People always think we learn important things-things that can change the balance of power. That's such nonsense. We learned nothing relevant. Not ever. And the American spies? They never learned anything about us either. We passed nonsense from side to side. It was a silly game."
"And my father?"
"The Soviet government let him out. Your Jewish friends think