There was a whole art to it. We’d teach one another the tricks, so that the KGB agents who tapped our phones wouldn’t be able to make anything out. You turn the dial to the end—old telephones had little holes for numbers that you could turn—and then you stick a pencil in it so that it locks…You can hold it down with your finger, too, but your finger gets tired…You probably know that one? Do you remember it? If you needed to say something “secret,” you had to get two or three meters away from the phone, from the receiver.
