Rhymes with Spy

Oilman Bill Simon and his wife Ophelia were delighted. Like a few other families in Gushing, Okla. (pop. 8,000), they had paid the passage of a D.P. couple, and taken them into their home to work. The Simons' couple, Jackin and Prowska Saij, worked hard as gardener & cook, and they never had to be told a second time how to use the automatic household gadgets. They knew only a few words of English, but the Simons had given the couple a radio to help them learn the language.

Polish-born, handsome Jackin Saij had grown up in the southern Ukraine, had lost his first wife & children during four years in a Nazi labor camp. Before they disappeared, the children had learned to tell the Nazis lies about their father, so that Jackin got frequent floggings. When the Russians returned, Jackin became their prisoner. Last November, Jackin married a fellow prisoner, and in December the two arrived in the U.S., their belongings in a rope-tied bundle.

Familiar Words. In their garage apartment, Jackin and Prowska heard over & over again on the radio the strange name Gubichev, and the familiar words Moscow, Stalin and Russia.

Also, again & again the radio cried "spy," which, to Jackin Saij's overwrought mind, sounded like his own name, with which it roughly rhymes.

Prowska began weeping at her work. Her only reply to Mrs. Simon's anxious questions in sign-language was: "Jack kaput, Prowska kaput" and the quick gesture of a finger drawn across her throat. From time to time Prowska's hands became paralyzed. Said the doctor: "There is nothing physically wrong with her, but she is scared."

Mrs. George Larrimore, a Gushing woman who speaks Ukrainian, came often to reassure Prowska and Jackin. Still Prowska drew a slender forefinger across her throat. "Mother, brothers, sisters, father kaput," she would say.

Strange Preparations. Jackin could not believe that it was not his name the radio called night after night. He was sure the Russians were coming to get him. "I have no hope left," he told Mrs. Larrimore. "I tried to keep it, but after eight years I lost it. If you can't trust your own children you can't trust strangers. My hope is gone like the cattle that go over the hill and never come back." One night last week, Bill and Ophelia Simon began to pack blankets and Thermoses for a fishing trip. Jackin and Prowska became certain that the Simons were leaving to escape the secret police. Next morning, Prowska woke to find her husband gone. She stumbled into the garage and found his body, swinging from the rafters by the rope which had tied his bundle from Europe.

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