Belly of the Whale

Belly of the Whale

By: Michael McKenna

Chapter 1

Michael Johnson, Jonna for short, did not question why exactly he felt compelled to swim in Lake Michigan that brilliantly sunny Autumn day. If he had more than a few hours to kill, that is how he spent them especially if the sun was shining as bright as it was that day. For those of you who have never seen the shores of Lake Michigan near Chicago, it looks like the North Sea from any quay in Hamburg, Germany. It looks no different than the Gulf of Finland at Петерго́ф, Russia where the hydrofoils dock after their 50 nautical mile trip from St. Petersburg. It looks very similar to anyone who has stood in any park in Linkoping, Sweden and gazed upon the Baltic Sea.

Meanwhile, Jonna would have never guessed that when he went for a swim this time in Lake Michigan, he would only get out of the water 3 months later after the lake froze over and 9,000 nautical miles away. But if he did guess that, he’d have laughed and would have followed his routine anyway. Not because he was looking for an adventure, not because he felt anything compelling him, but for just one reason only, because he loved the sensation of being weightless after diving into Lake Michigan off the rocks at 57th street.

As usual, he bought a quart of Blatz at 55th and Cornell and found a parking place near Promontory Point. Parking spots were free. Normally something free is not held dear with the exception of parking places in any permit zoned Chicago neighborhoods.

His gym bag swung as he walked. It contained the quart, his suit, extra pair of dry socks

and some loose change. He crossed under Lake Shore Drive and walked north to 47th street beach. All his life Jonna wanted to swim out to the partially submerged Schooner about 100 yards off the shore. When his courage met his wish to explore it, the water was too cold, when the water was warm, he never bothered.

At 48th he found a suitable spot, a tiny beach, shepherded by monolithic rocks. He looked around to see if he was being observed, paused until some passersby kept walking and launched his quart of Blatz 10 or 15 yards out into the lake. Sling shotting it like David high into the blue sky still in the plastic bag the grocer put it in.

For a moment it slowly settled to the bottom, finally reunited with its origin, Lake Michigan water was used to make this beer.

Chicago summers (and winters for that matter) can “lounge” under cloudless skies for days. This day was no different. With the ker plunk position firmly noted, Jonna started walking back to 55th street.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonna. But he didn’t notice it and if he did he would have ignored it. “Arise, go to M. that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

Jonna wandered onto Promontory Point. The Point was always envisioned as a jewel more than just another segment of Burnham Park. Burnham Park’s role seems to be keeping the lake shore green from 95th south to Sheridan north. The Point, a green of crab grass at 57th that juts into the lake 100 yards is a yoke surrounded by a shell of US Army Corp positioned monolithic slabs. A scenic lighthouse at the tip of the Point doesn’t direct ships and never did, doesn’t complete with the scenic lighthouses across the lake, but does create a center piece for Hyde Park’s love affair with the lake.

The ubiquitous roughhewn Easter Island sized moa rocks protecting the shore (each about 10 feet by 20 feet) seem to be laid haphazardly by US Army Corp of Engineers in the 1930s . Jonna guessed, they were intended to be laid as careful as giant chess pieces but for whatever reason became haphazardly strewn along in many places as if laid during a storm.

The trees would not grow with confidence without them.

Jonna intended to swim back to the place where his Blatz rested on the bottom.

He changed into his suit, hid his bag in the rocks and dove into the lake from the same rock the dogs used. The water revitalized him instantly. It was 69 degrees and he could stay in as long as he wanted, which could be hours.

This area of Lake Michigan is a little known relic of the Cold War. In the 1960’s Promontory Point was seen as a perfect location to defend Chicago from ICBM attack from the Soviet Union. Missiles could be positioned there to intercept those from across the horizon. The Soviets knew this somehow and ever since kept a close eye on the area via satellite and even, occasionally, closer than that.

Jonna swam north, but not hugging the shore. He was the furthest out in deep water. Not quite as far out as the many sailboats that dotted the horizon but further than the other bathers.

The water was not cloudy but not crystal clear either.

II

Jonna swam, dove, swam, dove, like a porpoise. He was having more fun than 10  other swimmers put together whose only goal was to beat the summer temperatures. Jonna's

target was the closest warning buoy keeping sailboats from getting too close to casual bathers and swimmers and submerged rocks.

Occasionally he swam down and dug his hands into the rich sandy bottom off Point Bay. He would scoop out handfuls and surface and plop them on his head, then dive again where the trail of sandy soil couldn’t follow as quickly the inertia of his head and slowly dispersed and settled again.

In some places Lake Michigan is 118 miles across to the other shore, and averages 300 feet deep, but going as deep at 900 feet. Jonna’s little kingdom, the Point Bay to 47th street was more like 6 feet deep on average and barely 2 miles square, but very close to him, it dropped off considerably.

Suddenly a flash of light under water caught Jonna’s attention but he ignored it, like he ignored a lot of stimuli that day. What grabbed him and did not let go was a sudden sense he was being observed.

He surfaced and swam on his back for a few yards. The sensation would not go away by looking at the picnickers from nearby U of C, or the dog walkers and their pet.  They didn't even notice Jonna was swimming far off shore.

He turned and dove again and suddenly felt a rush he could never imagine. His whole body became filled with the desire to swim out BEYOND the nearest buoy that demarcated how close the sailboats could come to shore. So far out the stormy petrel would fly down and examine the head in the water to see if it was a large fish of some kind.

Jonna was pulled, inexorably east to the buoy and beyond, almost as if he’d forgotten all about the Blatz waiting for him near 48th street. Several powerful strokes drew him near to it and at last he came to the buoy and took hold of it and caught his breath. Some other swimmers had the same target, but theirs was 3 buoys south.

Jonna smiled. He thought of turning  to shore again, then looked out east. East is where he’d go, sometimes so far away from shore, the seagulls swooped down to investigate his lonely figure slicing through the water, wondering  what he was doing.

The water got deeper and deeper, this time some human eyes were investigating Jonna.

He blinked his eyes. Did he see another schooner? Something resembling the antennae of a conning tower appeared and then almost instantly submerged. He recalled reading Iron Coffins the summer of 1985. A book written by a U-boat commander for the German Kriegsmarine who served the 3^rd Reich.

After caddying those summer days in the 80’s, he’d come home and cool his sunburn under the shower and lie under a single sheet and read about the German U-Boats of the war. Not even a mile away from his exact spot that summer day, completely on land,  was one of those U-boats, housed literally under the nearby Museum of Science and Industry, the U-505. It was captured in 1944 off the coast of North Africa and brought all the way back to Chicago.  A site Jonna visited more than once.

Before 1999, the U-505 sub was actually left outside and museum patrons entered it through a narrow canopied passageway. There is sat every single day, winter and summer. Jonna often walked past it to get to the beach and could reach through the iron fence around it and touch it. He patted it for luck.

He knew his imagination was not strong and never, he admitted to himself, had it gone to visual hallucinations.  Maybe it was from all commotion the night before. His condo board needed to have some documentation from a meeting (the meeting minutes) from 5 years earlier and Jonna (the secretary) only committed them to memory. Jonna had to prepare the minutes from the long ago meeting from memory and so it read like fiction. The Condo Board duly noted Jonna’s transgression, would they even mind if he disappeared from the board?,... from the building?

At work he was responsible for entering data into a system and this work was laborious but necessarily requiring precision and persistence. Jonna’s trait for persistence was keen, but his lack of precision was often criticized. Would his work even miss him?

Had stress got to him? Now he was seeing something like submarine antennae in the water off 51st street?

III

Aleksei Mickhailovich Malinin, commander of the Sierra II class Yuri Dolgoruki nuclear submarine issued his first order since laying eyes upon Jonna in the water through his periscope.

"Remain at a __ meters." (depth allowing only scope to be above the surface) he said calmly

in Russian to the wheel operator. "This one has seen us."

Jonna continued to look at the direction where he'd seen something he could not believe. The very top of the sub conning tower. Jonna rubbed his eyes and looked.

Aleksei Mickhailovich was born in Arkhangelsk,  in 1949. His father, Mikhail , was a house painter. If the 1917 revolution never happened, he'd have been a house painter. It is true, his father had been given every opportunity to learn how to read and write, and even a ticket to the Arkhangelsk Opera  (where he spent the performance with his mouth open and asking many stupid of questions of the well-dressed man seated next to him). But that was the extent of the benefits he received from the unique days in Petrograd in 1917.

What did allow for separation from the rest were Mikhail’s war wounds. He was recruited into the Red Navy in 1941 and somehow burned his hand so severely, it had to be removed. He was finally discharged and still, fortunately for the family, able to paint and plaster house’s walls in Arkhangelsk. The stories he told Aleksei about the Baltic stirred the young man’s imagination.   As a youth, Aleksei sailed on the White Sea and swam there in summer. A life on the sea when he turned 18 was all he dreamed of and so he took full advantage of the opportunities available to the son of a wounded war veteran in the late Sixties Soviet Union.

Aleksei entered the Red Navy in 1967.  Completed his basic training at Kronstadt and was selected for additional officer training based on his work ethic and excellent tests scores. He was known as the Red Navy's Stakhanovite. This was certainly not because he only shared the same first name as the legendary hard working Stakhanov. (Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov once shoveled ___ tons of coal in one day to earn the praise of the 30's era crew leader in the coal mine. Propaganda picked it up and turned Stakhanov into a household name). Being called a Stakhanovite in the 60's was not necessarily a compliment, but in this case, maybe.

Aleksei graduated with honors from the Petersburg Military school and began serving on surface ships in the Red Navy at age 22 as a non commissioned officer. After 10 years, he returned to school based on the patronage and advice of a high ranking naval commander who observed Aleksei’s hard work. Under the patronage of an Admiral, Aleksei studied submarine tactics and command. After graduation he served on two nuclear submarines before rising  to commnd the Yuri Dolgoruki, a nuclear submarine built in 2012 in Vladivostock, capable of staying on mission for years without refueling and passing under either pole.

Suddenly Jonna was no longer worried about whether or not he left his car parked awkwardly (he did), if he ran a camera surveillanced intersection when the light had turned red to get to the beach (he did), if he had a lawyer's letter in the mailbox at home demanding he follow some action be taken on his part or he would lose his toll booth transponder...Jonna was not thinking even of the Blatz snugly resting in the sandy bosom near 49th street beach. He was hanging on a buoy and rubbing his eyes, starting to believe he'd never really seen the antenna of a conning tower at all. His imagination

was not that strong.

Suddenly the sub's engines had a jolt due to sensors telling it the hull was too close to the bottom. It jolted up and forward. Aleksei Malininin ordered calm.

Jonna knew he wasn't seeing things anymore and started to swim back to shore as fast as he could. He may as well have seen the doral fin of a great white in the saltless waters of Lake Michigan!

Aleksei wasted no time. In Russian he ordered loudly, "This one has seen us, swing under him and surface!"

Jonna swam breathlessly as if in a dream. The faster he tried to swim, the slower he moved.

Suddenly his body felt a surge and push upward. Jonna was no longer in the water at all but on dry land. And he was still moving, now moving away from shore! He was still on the surface but decidedly moving away from shore. He was paralyzed with fear, not because he couldn’t swim but because it was October and the water further out was less than 59 degrees.

There were only a few swimmers at a buoy three down, and upwind, none would ever hear his cries.

Jonna was on the barely submerged deck of the Yuri Dolgoruki speeding 6 nautical knots east to wards the 900 feet deep middle of Lake Michigan.

IV

Aleksei was married to a woman who is known nowadays in Russia as a бабушкотенок or

babushkit. Babushkits did not outwardly exist in the Soviet Union but they were there, as seed is there deep under the earth waiting for the right conditions to grow and appear everywhere. Babushkits are women born in 1940's who lived through the edifications, the doctrine, the dogma of a brutal old regime that loved to use flowery words in its laws and be able to punish anyone who was on to their schemes and did not approve. These women suffered much. Even the cosmetics of the 1960's USSR were harsh and made their skin pre permanently stretched or bleached.

Babushkits are grandmothers by now, hence the prefix Babush. They have discovered the west, all it's esoteric entrapments. They try very hard embrace the west, ignore anything they were told about the west when they were young pioneers and komsomols. And sometimes this takes some doing as all of society cannot be so corrupt to their minds, and there has to be some place left and they try to claim it as their own. A new world where the lessons they were taught and can never forget keeps things sanitary but full of creature comforts. Immersed in the west they quickly adopt western fashion and cosmetics until they are best described as kittens, hence the suffix to the term бабушкотенок (kotehok or kitty). Objects men wish to play with and be amused by. After a few years, they no longer resemble komsomol ladies, but may as well have grown up in France. And do not be fooled, the West did enter Russia in 1991 as surely as the Germans did on June 22, 50 years earlier.

So -Kit is added to the end of the prefix of Babush and there you have the generation of Soviet women who were born in the 40's in 2013. They will say they were born in the late 50's, when Kruschev was in charge, but Joseph Vissaronich oversaw every one of their registered births. They believe their new cosmetics hides age. But the wrinkles around the eyes when they smile says otherwise.

Aleksei's babushkit had left him one perfume soaked letter to read every month of his deployment. Earlier that day, the letter he read from his babushkit warned him to be careful if he was near American shores. Something like a dream would take place. Aleksei, irritated to begin with that his wife was a babushkit, put the letter away and ignored it.

V

At this point, Malinin knew what he was doing was reckless but he couldn’t risk letting the swimmer he’d captured get away. If he had time to think it over, he’d have let Jonna swim away, but he’d been up for over 24 hours carefully mapping the coast of Chicago and made a hasty decision. “Full power to aft thrust minor engine B,” Aleksei roared to his engine room over his headset. “Take us due east on heading ____,” he shouted to the navigator. Jonna rose in the water and suddenly was no different than any surfer trying his luck 5,000 miles west off Maui! He kept his knees bent just like a surfer on the biggest surfboard ever built! The water rushed over Jonna’s knees but he managed to stay on his feet.  Within a few seconds, Jonna knew he was in cold water that was rather chilly and now well over 30 feet deep. He thought about jumping overboard but made up his mind the hang on and see where the ride would take him. He couldn’t swim back on his own.The Hyde Park (Southside of Chicago near the shore) behind him and no sailing boats between the sub and open water, the Yuri Dolgoruki made a dash for it as they say with Jonna on the front deck!

At a mile off shore, Aleksei ordered the sub to halt and descend to 10 meters which it did. This was the only time panic seized Jonna. Abandoned (or so he thought) he treaded water further from the shore than the 63rd street “crib” (drinking water intake). At that distance, the lake was several degrees colder than by the shore and Jonna was obviously just in swim trunks. “Let him understand we are his only hope now,” Aleksei whispered to his headset.

Several tense seconds passed and turned into minutes. Cool water cools the body 30 times faster than cool air, but Aleksei knew Jonna would need to tread water for over 30 minutes to risk hypothermia. Aleksei kept requesting sonar readings of nearby surface craft. Amazingly that sector of the lake was empty (though by Monroe Harbor downtown there were literally hundreds of pleasure craft on the water and headed in all directions).Above, just an azure blue sky that Chicago is afforded for days and even weeks at a time.All around, the green blue water of Lake Michigan. Slowly the Yuri Dolgoruki surfaced under Jonna for a second time that day. Aleksei climbed the conning tower. In a scene that would not be out of place in HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, Aleksei waited for the deck to completely rise out of the lake, when the water washed away, he opened the hatch. For the first time, 27 year old Jonna looked face to face with 64 year old Aleksei Malinin.

Chapter 2  

Jonna began shivering and responded affirmatively when Aleksei gestured him to come up the conning tower ladder and into the submarine. It was very little different experience for Jonna than if he was wandering through the forest and came upon a UFO sitting in a clearing with an occupant gesturing him forth. Jonna could not recall his bare feet and hands scaling the conning tower ladder whatsoever. He would need to be told he walked across the deck of the sub and climbed the tower.  If you told him he was carried by an ET field of energy, he would not have argued, his shock was such that his memory would not record. Inside the sub, after the tower hatch was closed behind, it was quite dark, with hundreds of LED lights in green and red emanating from switches and buttons aligning the walls.  

Aleksei shouted a command in Russian and suddenly Jonna was covered with a warm blanket and given a seat in the roomiest part of the sub at the base of the ladder he’d come down inside the ship.  Aleksei shouted another command in Russian and Jonna felt a jolt and movement. 

A cup of steaming hot tea was placed in Jonna’s blue-ish hands and he instinctively began to sip at the edge of the thin cup. Jonna felt eyes upon him from all sides. And then one of the sailors helped Jonna to the Aleksei’s cabin.

II

 “Hello, my name is Aleksei Malinin,” Aleksei said smiling. “I am the commander of this ship. Who are you?”

Not  quite still in shock thanks to the warmth of the tea and the ship itself, and a real floor beneath his feet. “Mike, my name is Mike…Privet…”

“Вам говорят на русском?” Aleksei asked.

“I know a few words.”

“It is common for Americans to know Russian? Or are you a professor of some kind?”

“I do not think it is common for Americans. How common is it for Russian subs to prowl around Lake Michigan?”

“How did you know it is Russian?” This mistrust went back and forth and I hate to bore the reader with it, but Aleksei left the cabin for a moment in disbelief that his captive knew the Russian greeting, Privet, pronounced Preevyet. He even locked the door behind him.

30 minutes later, Aleksei returned with a steaming hot plate of pelmani stuffed with minched pork and spices as well as a second glass of tea and handed it to Jonna. “Please take, take your time eating. I will be back after you have finished,” Aleksei said.

 Later he returned with a Russian sailor uniform that fit Jonna  and left it for Jonna to put on in private. After all these formalities, and unbeknownst to Jonna, with the Yuri Dolgoruki already 200 nautical miles from Chicago and nearly 800 feet beneath the surface of Lake Michigan, Aleksei was able to sit down with Jonna and talk.

III

“If you told me I was in lake Baikal I would believe it more easily than I can believe in am still in Lake Michigan,” Jonna said as Aleksei lit a cigarette and took a drag.

“How did you know Baikal has ever seen a Russian sub? How do you even know about Lake Baikal?” Malinin shouted. Are you Russian?”

“No, no, I am 100% American.”

“Have we have been duped? I was always taught Americans only know Russians drink vodka and play their bailelaikas.  Americans know about Privet? Lake Baikal? What more can you tell me?”

“That what I just ate was pelmani and I can quote Pushkin.”

At this Malinin stood up, threw down his cigarette, stamped it out and asked, “What am I smoking?”

“probably BelomorKanal cigarettes,” Jonna answered.

Aleksei shouted “How can you know all this?” and abruptly departed the captain’s quarters, slamming the heavy cabin door behind him!

 

Jonna’s meal was tasty pelmani (small dumplings wrapped in thin unleavened dough and fried) and tea. There was no hint they’d been actually prepared 10 months earlier in a naval military kitchen in St. Petersburg and deep frozen until that morning. Jonna had as much hot tea as he could stand. Eventually he forgot the meal and began to examine his new clothes. A blue and white tunic with blue pants and heavy wool socks. The patch on his right shoulder was the image of a red two headed eagle facing east and west.

The material was high grade cotton. Jonna was dry and comfortable now.

A single sweat drop dropped from Jonna’s brow. He noticed only then that the Captain’s cabin was warm.

Next Jonna noticed the sounds around him. A hum that sounded as if some mechanical component was stressed becoming less stressed and just a low bass hum.

Eventually Malinin returned.

IV

Aleksei was more relaxed this time. He offered Jonna a cigarette and it was declined. Still, this did not keep Aleksei from switching on a room fan and lighting up one.

“я прошу прощения…” Aleksei began in Russian and then stopped short. “Ha, I speaking in Russian you know…you look Russian in that uniform. Pajalusta, the room gets warm if the door is closed. I’m sorry I had to close this door.”

“It’s OK,” Jonna said softly. “When will you release me?”

“That is a difficult question,” Aleksey responded.

“You don’t have to,” Jonna interrupted him. “I feel at home in your culture. I cannot explain why. I read about your fairy tale witch Baba Yaga when I was only 9. She flew about on a thimble and frightened all the children, and me too. At age 13 I pretended my mom’s backyard was Smolensk and I was a Russki Soldat and I defended Moscow from the Grand Armee in 1812.

I first saw a remote Russian village in a photo at age 16 or 17. The girls were all blonde and beautiful. They did their chores and respected their role. They might have appeared simple and plain to anyone else looking over my shoulder. Still I knew they were close to nature and close to God. They might have demanded only that the little society they lived in was run in harmony with the Earth and that their spouses or boyfriends not drink too much on holidays.

In other words, as close to heaven as we can get in this strange world.”

“You assume a lot,” Aleksie noted. “You share one thing, you know, with us, you can dream…”

“Then I began to read Tolstoy and Chekov and Dostoyevskey, even Dostoyevsky is mollified by the pace and style of Russia. The system, the Tsar himself may have sentenced him to prison in Siberia for simply expressing himself. But this sentence and this experience of living death was mollified by the other convicts he met. He elevated their stories to epic literature.

Still I know Dostoyevsky was pushed to his limits and psychological strain and it distilled his truth in a unique way.

And this strain is very prevalent in his writing…”

“Pajalusta my friend,” Aleksey interrupted Jonna. “I am also aware of these things and I think you know that. After all it is my culture I lived and breathed since I was born.

Still I am more shocked by what you are saying than by the fact that we are having this conversation at all.”

Aleksey smiled and then so did Jonna. Then Aleksey frowned. “I cannot release you now. You could report our existence within the borders of the United States.”

“I would report you. So you must keep me then!”

At this point the captain of the sub began to see Jonna more comically and to humor him. “So you are NO traitor. This is very admirable. In Russia, to be a traitor is the worst of all things! I cannot allow a noble man such as you to report of this submarine’s existence inside US territorial waters.”

Jonna’s life in Chicago was not bad by any means. He played basketball three nights per week, swam on the nights he did not play basketball. Ate spinach salads 5 days a week, drank a few beers on Saturday night.

He liked his work as a data entry clerk in a small office. But he did not earn enough to take exotic adventure vacations. If he earned more, he might have gone to any number of mountains, jungles, deserts, caves or canyons in some far flung place like Iceland or the Congo. But he made barely enough to live on. So here was his big chance. This kidnapping could only be more on time if he had requested 10 workdays off yesterday (Friday).

“To tell you the truth,” Jonna said, “I need a break. Even when I stop at the Mexican bakery on 63^rd in the morning I don’t want to leave and continue on my way to work. It is dark and cool and even exotic in there. I see the workers baking away, kneading and mixing and baking. The coffee smells so good. My eyes instantly find some corner whose contents would fascinate me for years. But I know it’s because the workers there don’t know me and so they still like me.”

“That is a strange statement,” Aleksey said. “What is there not to like about you? Are you are a lazy worker? Do you have moral weakness? Contagious disease?”

“I dream too much.”

At this point Aleksey instantly realized that maybe he could drop Jonna off right back where he found him. No one would take him seriously. What’s more, he might not even report what happened because he himself realized no one would believe him and might even ridicule him over such claims as being kidnapped by a Russian sub.

Aleksey breathed a sigh of relief. He took a final drag on his cigarette and made up his mind to return to shore, close enough so that Jonna could make it back alive.

But the Lord had other plans.

Chapter 3

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the sailboats on the lake threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And many threw their cargo into the sea to lighten their ships.

Of course the Yuri Dolgoruky detected this surface disturbance and Aleksey decided to remain below for a while. He then ordered more tea sent to his cabin for their guest, Jonna.

Aleksey next ordered his first officer, Vasili Pichugin, off the bridge. They both went to the first officer’s quarters and they had a conversation in Russian. I will present the basic tenets of their conversation in English.

“Strange lake this is, the storm above is fierce,” Pichugin said.

“I experienced the same on Baikal once…” Malinin replied. “It was much worse on the surface of course.”

Pichugin offered his commander a cigarette. “Yes, do you think it provides us a good opportunity to depart these waters?”

“I was just about to return our captive to the shore," Aleksey said lighting up his cigarette.

“But after what he has seen, he will report of our existence..”

“No one will believe guys like him. He might as well report seeing a НЛО (UFO). That is the reaction he’d get from reporting he’d been abducted by us. I’d rather he stay behind. What can we gain by taking him to Russia? He would never be allowed to leave for the rest of his natural life.”

“It might be harder for him to stay behind then.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d be laughed at the rest of his life here. In Russia, he would not need to worry about laughter.”

“A cell at Lubyanka for a while would change his mind,” Aleksey said speaking aloud.

“What do you mean, change his mind?”

“He is a Russophile to a ridiculous degree. He probably can quote Достое́вский verbatim. He can probably hum the Rite of Spring. He sees Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин paintings in his sleep.”

Pichugin’s face showed not a little confusion at this revelation but he said nothing.

“Well, he can sit in some jail and get forgotten because his situation is so unique, I don't care," Malinin said but not believing his own words.

“Well, it is just as likely he’ll end up in a remote town and he would be outdoors and see a lot more than he’d ever read about in Russian books here,” Pichugin said.

“He is the kind who would see some mosquito infested hell hole a lot differently, that is for sure,” Malinin said.

"Or," Pichugin said, "we can put him in a torpedo tube and let him swim to the surface." Pichugin and Malinin both knew at 900 feet depth they were currently at, what that meant.

"No," Malinin replied. "I'm not killing him. He'd haunt me to my last hour for that."

“Is he some kind of professor? Or do alot Americans know Dostoyevsky by heart?” Pichugin asked.

“He seems to be one in a million. But there is more to this land than we were lead to believe ourselves Pichugin. Much more,” Sergey said. Then knowing Pichugin’s background added…

“Two societies, theirs and ours, turned peasants’ lives around by issuing them rifles and boots and literacy to fight with. US and Russia have much in common that way. Both societies produced something mocked by blue bloods of Europe because, for one thing, we do all their dirty work militarily in the world and pay them with interest for financing it.” Aleksey said.

“Our peasants were born in Russia, theirs came from Europe,” Pichugin said.

“Yes, but from the poor of Europe. The ones with nothing. You only risk crossing the Atlantic in 19^th century if you have nothing to lose,” Aleksey replied sternly. Then he added.

“If the storm over heard does not break in an hour, that is providence, we go and take him with.”

II

But the storm did not abate. 2 hours later, the surface of Lake Michigan above the Yuri Dolgoruky looked appeared to boil and toss, back near Chicago shoreline (the sub was up near Sheboygan and under 800 feet of water), water splashed onto Lake Shore Drive and it had to be closed. No storm of this magnitude could be recalled by the oldest Chicagoans.

“We have to take him with us,” Aleksey ordered and the sub “dropped anchor” and made it’s way back up through the straits of Mackinac, past Lake Huron, down and then up into Canada, into the Straits of St. Laurence, past Quebec City and out into the open Atlantic.

Despite Jonna’s wishes for an adventure, despite the excellent meals he received, he was getting nervous and could not relax.

Aleksey visited Jonna in his quarters after 3 hours.

“Jonna,” Aleksey said, “I have decided to grant you your wish and take you back with us to Russia.”

“Oh, well, I was having second thoughts. Yes I always wanted to join the navy, but ask anyone who knows me, I’m not cut out for it. Not at all. I must request you return me to  where you found me.”

“That was not possible,” Aleksey told him. “There was a storm on the surface over southern Lake Michigan up until…well, you’d never have survived the swim you’d need to make from where we’d need to have left you off.”

This was the first time Jonna realized without doubt he was a prisoner of Aleksey Malinin.

Aleksey admired Jonna’s stoicism when he received the news. Jonna did not flinch.

“I’m going to Moscow?” Jonna asked. Jonna suddenly realized what that voice he’d heard a day or so before meant.

“Not right away,” Aleksey said. “Eventually, first Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, but eventually you will board an express train to Moscow and even see Red Square. There might even be a parade for you.”

“Why?”

“You are hero of the Russian Federation.”

“Why?”

“You swam to Russia!”

“Don’t patronize me Commander,” Jonna said. “You won’t believe this but I am destined to go to Moscow.”

At this point, Aleksey had to reclaim his quarters and so allowed Jonna freedom of the ship IF he behaved.

The Captain made it clear to his men, Jonna was to be treated with respect and left alone as long as he didn’t get in their way or get too close to the navigation desk or affect the operations of the sub.

Jonna would sleep with the other sailors in the torpedo room. At first they were silent around their captive. But after a few days at sea, they began to swear and curse in Russian around Jonna as if Jonna were one of them.

To Jonna it was no different than should they be reciting Pushkin.

III

Submarine duty was uncomfortable and crampt, so the food on board was excellent. Tea flowed freely all day. At one point, in the middle of the North Atlantic, under bright sunshine and calm seas, the sub surfaced for a brief moment and the men were given permission to go for a swim and sunbathe on the deck.

Because their mission was such a success, Aleksey even allowed each crew member to open a single Baltika beer after their refreshing swim as they neared the North Sea.

Jonna had one too. The tranquility and the exhaltation of the brew (it was number 9) loosened his lips for the first time. As he sipped his beer, he told a fellow crew man who spoke fairly good English.

“I’ve had quite a few years lately,” Jonna said. “3 years ago, I met a Mexican girl at the Art Institute. She sold post cards and easily struck up a conversation. We found right away we both liked the same music and she was thirsty for a beer after work.

We exchanged phone numbers. Before long,

I was driving her to every bar, in every part of town that would serve us a drink every Friday night.

She was named Rosaura. I called her Rose.

Rose was from 87^th and Hudson… the poorest part of town. 32 blocks south of where I was swimming when this sub picked me up.

She wanted nothing more than to get out of that neighborhood. It wasn’t even safe to walk up Hudson to 87^th street to Commercial to catch the bus or the train. So she agreed to go with me everywhere.

I needed a pal to go off drinking with. Rose was not bad looking at all and she drank like a guy. Unlike most pretty girls, I never felt self conscious when I ate around her.   

So on one hand, it was perfect. She filled a need I had for a drinking buddy.

I think we kissed once in the whole year I knew her. That was staged too, we needed to give some caballero the impression we were dating. Anyway it was not romantic.

We both had a few extra dollars on Friday and Chicago bars are happy to exchange them for all the beer you can swallow.

I would drive Rose to yet another new neighborhood and yet another bar. We’d eat some free bar food (pretzels or sometimes even free hot dogs on a Sunday) and drink our fill of beer. Somewhere during that time, I felt like I lost some self respect. Driving home, I knew we should have hailed a cab.

I asked Rose to my company's formal downtown. She had too much to drink and got into a fight in the woman’s room.

She had even more to drink after that (it was gratis) and she fell down on the dance floor, taking me with her.
It was out of control. Now she sensed my lack of self respect and how can you pity that?”

The Russian sailor was a good listener. He only smoked and listened. Their liter sized Baltika beers were half finished.

Jonna continued. “I parted company with my company after that. They fired me for not calling a cab and driving home.

I’d found a new job so I was out celebrating. It was similar work to what I was doing, clerical and data entry.

I was just minding my own business at a local bar, by myself.

Mary was at the same bar celebrating the birthday of one of the girls in her party. They never even intended to go to the bar I was in (a dive) but one of them insisted as they drove past headed home because dives are usually the most fun anyway.

Mary had a bad toothache when we met so she never smiled that night. But she looked so glamorous. She had diamond earrings on, really kissable lips. I really fell hook line and sucker.

Suddenly, chance made our bar stools touch. We were sitting next to one another and I just said hello. I had no idea she was eager to get revenge on her ex husband for leaving her, divorcing her, remarrying and getting his new wife pregnant. (His new wife had been his mistress for years.)

I bought Mary a drink. We hesitated, but slipped me her phone number anyway.
She hesitated because she was conflicted. On one hand, she needed me as an accomplice to show her husband she could get a guy.
She was putting him on notice her grieving period was over!
On the other hand, she liked to play the role of having her "guard" up so she wouldn’t get hurt “again”.

In this case, that all was magnified because she had three children at home aged 8 to 11 and she couldn’t just bring a new guy into their lives very easily or often.

She did tell me right off that she was divorced with three kids. But all I saw were those sparkling diamond earrings and incredible lips.

After a few dates (dinner and a stage performance, drinks at top of John Hancock center) she realized I wouldn’t hurt a fly.

I felt a surge of self respect because I was out with this glamorous babe.

She had no money problems, she received a whopping sum monthly from her ex because he was nearly a millionaire.

This all must have gone to her head. I guess it could be intoxicating to receive thousands per week to coordinate her 3 children’s lives for such sums. But now she was doing it with me, I was willing to step into what really was another man’s role, and she felt the circle unbroken again. She did it alone for a few years I guess, hoping her ex would come back. Now she realized he wouldn’t.

I wanted us to start going to a local Chapel for Eucharistic adoration to show praise and thanksgiving.

She started making plans faster than a dictator who realizes he possesses the key to the Reichstag. I was dragged to every conceivable family function that would allow Mary to show me off, her new "prize", to her ex in-laws and her ex.

Before I knew it, she told me was pregnant. Because I was a not a good Catholic (obviously) but a practicing Catholic, and she was expecting, she expected I’d drop to one knee and marry her.

When I said I’d never leave her, her face dropped. That was not the words she needed to hear. She needed to see a ring asap.

“My brothers will kill you,” she said. “I will kill you.”

The pregnancy she tried so hard to make happen turned out to be a false alarm. But I knew I was playing with fire because of her lack of respect for me.

It took me way too long, but I left,” Jonna said and sipped his beer.

"Then I came back, left again, came back, left again. Finally she took me to the curb."

“You give self no respect, you get no respect….now you must finish the trilogy, you give no respect to another,” the Russian sailor said.

“Oh, that was this year. Sally came into my life. No dumber a woman ever lived!!

Sally speaks 7 languages and is a certified lawyer and nurse. But she will always be "silly Sally".

Sally is much older than me. Maybe she is even 35.
She insists on oil, wax and pigment preservative coated eyelashes. I warned her against it. I told her that over time her eyelashes would die and look like spider legs. She insists she stopped. And this was usual for silly Sally.

"I do not need to stop wearing mascara for you my dear, I never ever wore it once in my life," she'd say.

I said to her, "Sally, you are silly," to her face.

I tired of kissing her the instant we kissed. It was as if I was kissing my sister, sure, but worse, her lips were not firm yet they had some kind of epoxy on them, like glue, so that our lips bonded to one another for a split second. This combination of things are intolerable.

“Sally lives in Europe now. She is a very successful business woman,” Jonna said. Suddenly he realized he was living out his oldest dream. He was going to Europe!

But in a Russian Submarine and he knew his ultimate goal was to preach to the citizens of Moscow that they must repent. Wasn’t this message needed just as bad in Chicago?

Jonna stopped drinking his Baltika. This thought sobered him up. Then Alexey came through and said something in Russian. He ordered the sailor speaking to Jonna to report to his post.

“We are now making preparations to go through the North Sea. The weather will change. The men will all be busy until we dock at Kronstadt. I must ask you to only speak with me from now on pajalusta…eh, please. You still have complete freedom of the ship, but if you ask any questions or interfere with my crew, this privilege will be taken away.”

“Ya Ponemayu,” Jonna said which is “I understand in Russian.

Alexey smiled. “I can see you are using your time on board my ship well, congratulations.”

Jonna could be sent to Columbia or Yale or Harvard and in a year he’d learn less than he knew going…but give him the most dilapidated public library in any poor neighborhood and a bus pass and in that same year’s time, he’d be able to converse with a scholar on the most erudite subjects. He was a sponge and absorbed everything placed around him. 

 

Chapter 4

The Commander of the Russian sub Yuri Dolgoruki had allowed a great deal of fraternization between his captive, Jonna and his crew as the sub passed under the surface of the North Atlantic. However once they crossed into the North Sea, all of this changed. A dramatic change. Silence was to be observed at all times and all non-essential equipment turned off.

Jonna once tried to say Privet to the kind sailor with the open ear heart and attentive ear. The sailor, barely 21, who he spoke with so freely about his past and the women who made him realize what narrow escapes he had. This sailor was absolutely stone faced and did not acknowledge Jonna under the North Sea.

 

That again all changed as the sub crossed into the Baltic sea and neared Kronstadt. The keep silent order was reversed.

 

One evening, the cook served  fish soup, cooked with potatoes in pickle water and with cucumbers. The cook then ground beef, pork, onions and bread into a bowl and mixed them thoroughly. From this mixture he rolled up little balls in his hands and put into a hot frying pan to cook. Salad and brown bread were available in great quantity. Everyone drank their fill of tea.

After their meal, Aleksey and Jonna had a chat in his cabin.

“Did you enjoy the meal?” Aleksey asked.

“Yes, of course. I could never hope to find a real Russian restaurant where I was swimming when you picked me up. And I was actually thinking of where I could get a good meal too.”

“I am glad.”

There was silence. “Did you enjoy it?” Jonna felt compelled to ask.

“Я слишком беспокоиться,” Aleksey said barely above a whisper and not trying to answer the question with his phrase.

“Oh,” Aleksey said above a whisper. “You often remind me of a fellow I know back in Russia. I forget you are not Russian. I worry too much. Between that and my fondness for cigarettes, I have a balance. But at cost of walking a tightrope.”

“Tell me about what will happen to me in Russia please.”

“I cannot predict the future.”

“Maybe I can swim in every river, Volga to Iset…and get a holy bath in Solovki in the White Sea” Jonna asked.

“How do you know these details?” Aleksey suddenly shouted. “Are you a spy?”

“No, I promise I am not. I just read about your country like Don Quixote read about knights errantry.”

There was a long pause. Aleksey finished another cigarette.

“First time in Lake Michigan?” Jonna asked to change the subject.

“Da da, of course,” Aleksey said but them fumbled to find a light for yet another of his Balmorekanal cigarettes.

“Tell me, can you swim in every American lake and river?” Aleksey asked to change the subject.

“No, I would not swim in certain areas, but the ones that were polluted are getting cleaned up,” Jonna said.

Aleksey felt badly that he knew Jonna’s likely fate. Jonna appeared to Aleksey as something of a holy fool, a famous figure in Russian history.  Known as iurodstvo in Russian.

Iurodstvo is a renunciation of what St. Paul called the “wisdom of this world,” to which he urged us not to be conformed since this wisdom “has been made foolish by God”.

Aleksey felt he beheld a Holy fool in Jonna.

“Your God was not able to protect you so far. I wanted to return you to shore but the storm…”

“If every one acted as Christ, we would all be protected. Until that day, we must evangelize the Word so people see that acting Christlike is the way to peace on earth. Inside us and outside.”

“And what if I present you a nice cell at Lubyanka,” Aleksey said knowing Jonna knew that meant a cold central prison in Moscow.

“It only means I did not do my job, I did not act Christlike enough in my life, nor did my brothers in Russia who were able to shape and form you and the ones I will meet who put me in a cell.”

“Then because you are NOT enough of Christ, you must be nailed to a cross so to speak (put in a cell)?”

“Irony,” Jonna said.

“I’m am not a well intentioned listener in this case, sorry. Subjectively, I feel pretty strongly you will be made a prisoner, not unlike the Indians that Hernan Cortes stumbled upon when he conquered Mexico in 1519. Russia is not trying to conquer the US, but our mission was not one that can be revealed just yet. You see, we’d like to keep coming back. You might reveal our plans and so you become necessary to eliminate.”

“You think Chicago is interesting militarily?”

“We did not just stop at Chicago, but all along the Great Lakes,”

Aleksey said.

“Are US subs in the Black Sea?”

Aleksey grew irritated by this. “My friend, you and I will soon part ways. You will be put in a cell in Lubyanka. It may be we cannot tell your embassy you are there. Your family will think you drowned in the lake by Chicago. And to be honest my friend, it could have very easily happened if I returned you in that gale force storm. But I couldn’t.”

Aleksey was sure Jonna would perish in Lubyanka and he felt bad, but he steeled himself from the sentimentality of it all. He lit another cigarette and waited for Jonna’s response.

“If you tried to return me during the storm, and it was so bad, I would have been eliminated that way," Jonna said.

"I am not a murderer," Aleksey responded immediately. "In jail you will still have life, maybe they will transfer you to some prison in the Urals and you can see Russia for real. It is not an easy life, but it is life."

"I am being brought to Moscow for another purpose,” Jonna said.


This piqued Aleksey’s curiosity. “What purpose is that?” Aleksey said and exhaled the smoke from deep in his lungs.

“A divine message dwells within me. All these past few days on this vessel, that message has brought me the exact opposite of what it brought me on shore the day you found me. It has brought me peace. I was able to spill all my past sins to one of your sailors. I have not seen that sailor since and I believe he was an angel because he listened so well and his English was best I have yet encountered outside of yours Captain.”

Jonna continued.

“I am at peace with my mission now, finally, even though it is one of judgement. That is not for me to fear, because the God who sends me forth is a patient God.”

Aleksey laughed. “You know our greatest writer, Lev Tolstoy had the same mission. Do you plan to write a novel as long as War and Peace in Lubyanka?”

“War and Peace was taken as entertainment. I do not want to merely entertain, but I will if I must.”

“You arrogant American. Your country is involved in more clandestine operations in more countries than you could even dream of. Why don’t you start at home? That way you could do it from a street corner on what you like to call a soap box. Inside Moscow you will be in a prison, maybe not even with a cellmate for years!”

“The Lord will deliver the message through me,” Jonna countered. “I cannot predict how.”

“Enough of this,” Aleksey said. And he ordered Jonna into the isolated quarters of his first officer Pichugin, thus displacing Pichugin and requiring him to sleep in shifts on a regular bunk.

“We will be docking at Kronstadt in a day or so,” Aleksey said.

Or some reason he felt a certain sympathy looking at Jonna in his smallish Russian sailor outfit. “You are Myshkin aren’t you?”

Jonna recognized this literary reference at once. Aleksey was referring to Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

“I am no Myshkin,” Jonna replied. “But my nickname is Jonna and I am currently inside the belly of a sort of fish. Perhaps that is how history likes to repeat itself, so obvious it is missed.”

II

 

The Yuri Dolgoruky moved under the Gulf  of Finland at midnight. Instructions that a prisoner was onboard were radioed to Kronstadt in code. Aleksey smoked a Russian cigarette and could not sleep in his otherwise very comfortable quarters.

But Jonna slept very deeply indeed in First officer’s Pichugin’s bunk as Pichugin was ordered to sleep in shifts in a common sailor berth.

And Jonna dreamt as he slept.

It was as if a few years never passed and Jonna was with his friend Dave back in Chicago.

Jonna worked with Dave and if it was payday, after work, they cashed their checks at the Currency Exchange on Wabash and Adams and had a few beers at the Center (an old Chicago pub on Randolph).

They both worked, but not necessarily together, at the Art Institute. Dave was stationed by the carpenters and Jonna was in the shop.

Jonna liked very much to observe others chase their dreams. In this case, Dave was a very talented painter from an extraordinary family of painters. Dave was too young at that point to be more than an art student at the school of the Art Institute. He got free tuition by working at the museum and made just enough to pay his bills. In meantime he fit in his dream of being as famous as any artist who ever lived.

By day he dragged skids of merchandise from the Art Institute dock on Monroe through a maze of underground corridors to the basement of the museum shop on Michigan, just past the famous lions that guard the entrance.

Given access to some kind of grant or stipend, Dave would have gladly spent his days in his one room studio apartment in Lincoln Park painting a modern goddess sleeping under the waves. But even commissions were not being painted for hard cash because Dave himself was barely 23 and had no established connections, art world or otherwise, to arrange request and payment exchange.

Dave unwrapped skids of merch and wheeled them to the shop basement. From there shop workers (Jonna and some other sales women) would bring  books and prints and statues up, arrange them and add sales tags.

The girls all found Dave irresistible because he was a handsome artist and spoke with a slight American Southwest accent.

Not all the girls fell under his spell, mostly just the single ones did though.

Jonna met Dave very soon after he started working there himself and felt sorry for Dave. They were friends because

they were the same age and when they first met, Jonna mentioned that Dave looked like on the long haired musicians in a band they both followed.

They did not simply just leave work with a paycheck on Friday (payday was every Friday) without plans, their expedition reconnoitered the neighborhood to find out the exact location of females. Often Jonna let the girls he worked with know what their plans were and where he and Dave would be. These girls sometimes showed up in case the bars were empty.

So it was established in Jonna was with the Art Institute Museum Shop girls and Dave. All the girls wanted to see Dave’s work and were invited up to his studio. Of course Jonna had a standing invite.

Dave’s studio in Jonna’s dream was no different from how it looked in 1988.

Every inch of wallspace was covered with an original painting. Dave recycled them so next to his white fridge were another eight or nine which were hanging before. The kitchen area was simply a white sink and fridge in the corner to the left as you entered.

The rest of the room smelled of oil paint, cigarette smoke and tea. There was just a bed and a fireplace that was no longer used.

In his dream, Jonna opened the fridge and took out a can of beer for himself and one for Dave.

They opened the beers and poured a few swigs over each other, laughing as Dave dried himself and put on a record.

Both chugged down what remained in their cans as the first strains of some music entered their ears, usually the blues as interpreted and played by a band from England that formed in the 70’s. The three girls that were with them giggled and the bravest one got a can for herself.

Suddenly Jonna’s dream advanced forward to the next morning.

Dave was lighting up a cigarette and making tea for everyone. Then explaining what was on the easel, a shaman as

Dave was reading Carlos Castaneda. They all contemplated the state they entered with their eyes.

Then Jonna realized the cigarette smell was not just in his dream, but real, Aleksey was standing in the room.

“We have arrived at Kronstadt,” Aleksey said and put out his cigarette. “You are now home, in Russia.”

 

 

Chapter 5