ABSTRACT
After signing our wills in Steve Saft’s2 office, we proceeded to Kennedy airport to catch Swissair. Arriving in Zurich, we found a day room where we could take a nap. We arrived in Moscow at a quarter to four in the afternoon. The border guard in his little booth looked at me very carefully. After much looking at me and the photograph, he asked me to take my hat off, checked me, double-checked me (I twirled my mustache to indicate that I was the same person as in the picture), and then allowed me through. We had some trouble getting luggage carts. Ingrid and I decided to go through customs individually with separate bags to maximize the chance of everything being OK and minimize their perception of the amount of stuff we were bringing in. In going through customs, I noted who was doing the inspecting, and chose the inspector who, due to his sparse hair, seemed to be the oldest and who was indeed in charge. I got on the end of his line hoping he would want to finish with me quickly to go for “tea” break. He checked my small green carry-on bag which had in it more camera supplies than one can
imagine. It contained Dick Rush’s3 two cameras with extra zoom lenses, a Polaroid camera, my own camera and another extra zoom, and a walkman. It was jam-packed. He double x-rayed it, but never asked me to open it. He did ask me to open one suitcase, took out a number of the children’s books by Isaac Bashevis Singer that the Conference4 had asked me to take, picked up Chaim Potok’s book Wanderings-History of the Jews, and said to me, pointing to the cover, “This is the wall of Christ?!” I pleaded total non-understanding of what he was saying. He finally put the books back after some further inspection, and did not mark the back of our visa with anything that had to be taken out of the country. Luckily, he did not come upon the oranges from Israel that I had stashed in another suitcase. Ingrid had already passed through without any problem and without having any bag opened at all, although I wasn’t sure of that. I had a fantasy of her being interrogated by the KGB,5 all the contents of her suitcases strewn on the floor, explaining who Sean Bloom in Dublin6 was and why he was getting twenty-five Superdance USA T-shirts, lipsticks, jeans, and eyeshadow for his Bar Mitzvah.
