Page 79 - LEIBY

Chapter 9 79

of cigarettes. But these were good-case incidents, and Leiby
would readily hand over to the soldier whatever he requested.
Then the satisfied soldier would jump off the van and make his
way on foot back to the border checkpoint. Yank already knew
what he had to do then. He would press down hard on the
accelerator, and drive in a large circuit around the local farms,
until they would reach an unguarded section of the border.

On other occasions it was more complicated, when the soldier
would insist on accompanying the suspects right up to the police
building itself. Then Leiby would have to bribe the policemen
with far higher sums so that they would agree to let the refugees
go without opening criminal records against them. Every time
that happened, Leiby risked getting arrested himself.

Once, when the police lieutenant Vassily had had a little too
much vodka, he blurted to Leiby, “When they start making
some order around here, you’ll be the first to be arrested!”

“Me?” Leiby acted surprised though his heart stopped beating
for a moment.

“You, of course you. You’ve been hanging around the border far
too long.”

Leiby shaded his eyes with his hand and waved to the soldiers
he could see from a distance, but none of them waved back. He
approached the train station, and to his surprise, he saw that the
Slavic Russian soldiers who had been on duty there for quite
a while had been replaced by sunburned, slanted-eyes Asian
soldiers, together with a group of Polish militants. This was a
new troop who had come to guard the border, and to ensure
that among the Polish expatriates returning to Poland, were no
soviet infiltrators. They had set up three tables, and anyone who
alighted the train had to present his papers for inspection.