Word: kgb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Combative Nature. One morning last week, the KGB silenced Amalric's detractors. Four cars bearing a total of 14 men pulled up outside the author's country cottage near the village of Aku-lovo, 85 miles southeast of Moscow. Two men knocked on the door. They wanted to inquire, they explained, whether Amalric and his beautiful Tartar wife Giselle planned to vote in the next elections. Once inside, the two identified themselves as KGB agents and beckoned to their twelve colleagues...
True to his combative nature, Amalric insisted on his right to examine the credentials of each of the KGB officers. He also studied the arrest warrant, and when he detected an incorrect date for his birthday, he said jokingly: "You see, you have the wrong man." Amalric learned that half of the agents were from the Siberian border city of Sverdlovsk, where a copy of his book, which was circulating in typed form via the Samizdat underground press, had been confiscated by the authorities...
After an hour, the Moscow agents decided to take Amalric to the capital, where he has one room in a crowded communal apartment. Protesting that he had a right to be present while his cottage was being searched, Amalric refused to budge. Two KGB men lifted him up by the arms and led him away...
...road back to Moscow that the KGB men spotted the field of lilacs and filled the trunk of one of the autos with them. When they came to a town, one of the officers suggested to Giselle that she buy some food for her husband. "He'll need it where he's going," said the KGB man solicitously...
When Giselle returned to Moscow, Amalric and his captors were still in his room, where the agents seized another long list of items. Among them were five unpublished plays that figured in his 1965 conviction as a "parasite"; he spent 21 years in Siberian exile then. The Moscow KGB agents refused to let him accept the food Giselle had bought. Said Amalric to his wife: "Goodbye, and don't worry, little woman. Stay well...