MEXICO
We were going to leave for Mexico early, so there wouldn’t be so much traffic, but I didn’t go to bed for a long time, trying to outlast Alyona: I told her I would work a bit more, I had to get ready. Whenever I heard her schizophrenic scuttling — bedroom-bathroom-toilet, would she ever go to sleep? — I’d turn off the feebly moaning erotica on the STS channel with the remote control, and re-read, frowning affectedly, the investigations of a Z. Sagalevich. Mr. Sagalevich maintained that Umansky was known as a friend of the great master of the Jewish stage Solomon Mikhoels. He did not live to see the nationwide Judeophobic campaign of ‘49. And still, Mr. Sagalevich wrote, “His tragic death in a plane crash was, as it is now becoming clear, not a coincidence, but was a planned operati
