It’s the summer of 1975. My brother and I are wandering around Moscow. A young Russian man comes up to us and starts a conversation. Once a certain level of trust is achieved, he brings up the subject of books banned in the USSR. “Would you mail me a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint?” he asks. He writes down his address, the conversation eventually ends, and we go our separate ways.
Today, I thought about my trip to Moscow when I learned Philip Roth had died. Soviet censors kept a tight lid on what citizens could read. There was no way they would permit a book about a Jewish American bachelor who was preoccupied with his penis.
I look at the picture at the top of this post. I’m standing in Red Square with a World War II gas mask case hanging from one shoulder. Perhaps I had just been in the GUM department store, visible on my right, where I noticed the long line waiting to buy disposable ballpoint pens.
Or maybe I was about to be hurried to the front of another line to view Lenin’s body. (Lenin’s tomb is off-camera to my left.) The air was chilly in the underground tomb, and the guards warned us to be respectful.
My mind would be swimming with the richness of everyday life in Soviet Moscow.
But I was on guard when I spoke with the young man in Moscow: maybe he was an agent provocateur.
I never did mail the book. I had to assume the package would be intercepted by a Soviet censor, and the recipient would be punished in some way.