Last Call for Blackford Oakes (8 page)

A novel praising all aspects of life in the Soviet Union in 1952, plus membership in the state committee, wasn't quite enough to keep Ivanov in the higher echelons of literary life in Moscow. But he could not be ignored, even by writers who felt contempt for him. What Ivanov lacked in literary imagination, he made up for in artful bureaucratic improvisation. He had climbed the ladder of the Writers' Union and served it now as vice chairman. His colleagues had little use for him as an interpreter of Soviet life, but enormously esteemed his ability to catalyze bureaucratic preferences. One hundred Moscow men of letters were obliged to Artur Filippovich for this or the other special grant or favorable notice or university preferment or permission to travel. It would be he, nominally, who would have the critical vote on which foreign books could be displayed in Gorky.

“He's an old fraud,” Gus had briefed Blackford before the guests arrived, “but perfectly pleasant in social situations. Every now and again, if there are Soviets in the room and an American is within earshot, he'll think it prudent to enter a chauvinist wisecrack. Ideological boilerplate. Tuppence in the collection plate.”

“Is he curious? What does he know about me? Just the description you sent out?… Book agent … consultant to the New York Public Library … associated with the USIA?”

“He's not going to ask you what were you doing when JFK was killed. Not that kind of detailed curiosity. No, he'll just coast on the Gorky business, and you're well up on that.”

“Tell me about Ursina Chadinov.”

“Well,” Gus said, turning his head slightly. “She's a local star in the intellectual set. A practicing physician, a professor at Moscow University, author of a book on—urology, actually.”

“Can we get the English-language rights to that one?”

“Don't sell this lady short. She is also as fluent in English as you are, and just as beautiful as you … used to be. Come to think of it, I guess I get my good looks from you, Dad!”

Gus turned his head sharply at the sound of a door opening, but it was only the waiter. “And, of course, she's active in the Scientists' and Scholars' Union.”

“So be nice to her?”

“Yeah. Be nice to her. We've got a few other natives who are quietly friendly to the U.S. There's the Nikitins, husband and wife, Yevgeny and Antonina. They're true cultural grit. He plays the piano, she, the violin, and they do joint musical appearances. Both of them teach, and they're members of the Musicians' Union. There's a new edition of
Grove's
coming out, and they'll want to talk about putting that book—all twenty volumes—on the list of books to be authorized, even though it's a Brit publication, not one of ours.”

“Gus, a delicate question I hadn't given any thought to: Have you got a specific allowance from the USIA to pay for outings like this one?”

“Oh sure. And Ivanov is almost certain to give a reciprocal cocktail party. Nothing lavish. The Commies are extravagant only on the military; everything else is penny-pinch. But they are also pretty hospitable. And, somehow, the money materializes.”

“How are your guests in English?”

“Ivanov speaks it pretty well. So do Eduard and Sofia Konstantin—they lecture at the foreign-service school, and they've traveled abroad. The Nikitins speak it a bit. And as I said, Ursina is fluent. I don't have to tell you, these things have a way of working out, common sympathies. This is glasnost time, hang it all out. You got some body language worked up to communicate the true meaning of
The Federalist Papers
?”

The doorbell rang.

CHAPTER 15

Gus signaled to the waiter, hired help for the cocktail hour, motioning him to the door. Pyotr opened it for Deputy Minister Ivanov, whose raincoat Pyotr took, asking what refreshment he'd prefer. Pyotr nodded energetically when Ivanov mentioned champagne, his eyes surveying the rest of the room to order his social priorities.

Gus introduced the minister to “Mr. Henry Doubleday, our guest of honor, here to do what he can to make our Gorky exhibit truly successful.” Blackford looked at the short, portly bureaucrat with the decorations peeking over his breast pocket. Acknowledging the guest, Blackford apologized for his ineptitude in Russian.

Ivanov shrugged his shoulders. “I am glad to speak in English except that you must not … ah … make records of my mistakes. I am a writer, not”—he looked over at Gus with manifest condescension—“a translator.”

Blackford smiled, of course. “And most important”—he would begin to ply his professional line—“we speak to one another in books. I am ever so pleased that the Culture Ministry is as enthusiastic as we at USIA over the
fifteenth
U.S.–Soviet cultural exhibit coming up in June. It is an honor to have your enthusiastic patronage.”

Ivanov nodded and sipped at his champagne, and Pyotr opened the door to other guests. It was the Nikitins, the musicians. They asked for soda water—“Yevgeny and I have to perform later in the evening,” Antonina said with a smile, shaking Blackford's hand, “so it is too
early
to celebrate. I hope that before you leave Moscow, we will have an opportunity to play for you?” Bits and pieces of that thought were delivered in pidgin English and Russian, with Gus's assistance, and Blackford nodded his way through it and said, “I very much hope so.”

Yevgeny wasted no time. As other guests, some Russian, some foreign, arrived, he stuck with Harry Doubleday. “Our English is not perfect, but our devotion to
The Grove Dictionary of Music
is—total. One would make a great effort to learn English for two reasons: Shakespeare, and
Grove's
.” Blackford agreed. Agreeing was easy. He'd put off the claims of Ernest Hemingway.

“There is the problem of … price,” Nikitin continued. “Do you by any chance, Mr. Doubleday, know Harold Macmillan?”

Blackford was caught off guard. “
Know
Harold Macmillan? You mean, the prime minister? The chancellor of Oxford?”

“Well, yes. But I meant the Harold Macmillan who is the president of Macmillan Publishing, which is the publisher of
Grove's
.”

“Comrade Nikitin, Macmillan is on his deathbed!”

“Perhaps, then, this is an opportune time to get Macmillan Publishing to release
Grove's
? If the terms were right, I'm sure we could reproduce the twenty volumes here.”

Blackford was letting himself get in too deep in publishing particulars. He was glad to be interrupted, this time not by Pyotr but by Gus Windels.

“Harry, may I introduce Professor Ursina Chadinov? Mr. Henry Doubleday.”

Blackford lowered his head to hear through the hubbub. The glare from an awkwardly placed lamp forced him to blink, in order to take her in. She was a startling figure, tall and slender, her fair hair loosely swept back. Her pearls exactly matched her teeth in her smile of greeting, her inquisitive eyes fastening with some interest on Gus's guest of honor.

“You are here, Mr. Doubleday,” she addressed him, “to get us to read more books in English. Well, I would not object to that.”

Blackford bowed his head with a half smile. “I am informed there is nothing in the
Oxford English Dictionary
that would surprise you.”

“A gallantry, of course,” she accepted the glass of wine from the waiter, “and I do not conceal my knowledge of your language. But how many Russians do you believe would interest themselves in your compendious Oxford dictionary?”

“Professor Chadinov, the Oxford dictionary is not something I presume to represent. I am an American, here to stimulate the readership of American-published books. On the matter of the Oxford dictionary, the
OED
as it is called, compendious is exactly the word to describe it. The new edition will have, like
Grove's
, twenty volumes, and will integrate the entries from the old supplementary volumes with the rest of the dictionary.”

“The Russians, you obviously know, since you inhabit the world of books, are a profoundly literate people. I do not use the word ‘literate' in the purely demographic sense. A people who are formally illiterate can still be profoundly literate, living as some societies in the past have done, by oral rather than visual perceptions.”

“Well, Professor, if you mean do I know that the Russians are profoundly sensitive to language, the answer is yes, I am aware of that. It is in Russia, I would guess, that there is the highest per-capita consumption of poetry. Though I'm not sure whether this includes China. There, of course, the poetry of Mao Tse-tung is vastly popular.” He permitted himself the slightest trace of a smile, and watched to see if she would reciprocate it. She did not, though the light in her eyes told him she had registered the crack. He went on, “We of the USIA are anxious to introduce more students of the Russian language to the marvels of our own language.”

“Excuse me. You are an official of the United States Information Agency?”

“No, Professor—”

“Call me Ursina.”

Blackford felt a movement, absolutely distinctive, in his loins. He was suddenly a college boy, ignited by a girl. Did he overreact? What he said was, “Ursina … Ursina, this is a stellar moment for me. I am Harry.”

There was a clinking sound—Gus tapping his glass with a ballpoint pen. Eyes turned to the host. “Everybody who is not seated, kindly find a seat. Take your glasses with you—Pyotr will keep them filled.”

Gus Windels went on for a while on the theme of the United States' interest in making available to Soviet scholars whatever material might be useful to them in their work. He was careful to make his way around unguarded expressions hailing a free press, or routine praise for the idea of the uninhibited circulation of books. After all, Gus reminded himself, he was speaking in the center of Moscow, where even Solzhenitsyn's last novels had not been published. He trod on no ground that was disputed, or that would arouse ideological resistance. “The efforts of the USIA in the scheduled cultural exhibit in Gorky are aimed simply at making available desired critical and historical material,” etc. etc. etc.

Blackford turned his eyes to Ursina Chadinov, seated alongside. She was not quite listening. Her eyes did not turn from Gus, but her head was in slight, constant motion, as if concerned to permit the eyes to perform their civic duties, while expressing progressive impatience with the text she heard being recited.

“Do you have any questions that I or Mr. Doubleday could try to answer?”

Blackford leaned over and whispered to Ursina. “I have a most urgent question. Can you free yourself to have dinner with me?”

She turned her head, while Gus began an answer to a question from Comrade Ivanov. She gave the slightest nod, followed by a smile of mischievous pleasure.

They talked like old friends at the restaurant she led him to, candle-lit, the mirrors old, and appropriately smoky. It was clearly a favorite of men and women of the university. The conversations were nearly all in Russian, though the couple at the table immediately behind the one assigned to Ursina and Blackford was a font of endless French, from both the vigorous young woman and the elderly man.

Ursina sat, and the waiter asked, “The usual?”

“Do you trust me?” she asked. “—Harry?”

“Not entirely, but yes, in the matter of wine.”

“Some day, before I die, I want some person, male or female, who is given to drink the wine I select, to say, ‘I don't like it.'”

“I promise to try to dislike it.”

“Do you speak French?”

“Not really. Just the kind of French one can't escape running into, if …” His hesitation momentarily unnerved him. “If you've, you know, been around.”

“Well, I want to know about your background, where you've been around. To show you I'm prepared to do as much: My father was a civil servant, he died when I was twelve, I grew up in Leningrad, then I went to medical school in Moscow, and I have been quite successful—but you know that. Oh yes, I am a member of the Communist Party. I don't suppose you can match
that
, can you?”

“Well, no. I was never a member of the Party. And I have disagreed with Soviet policies over the years—”

“So have I.”

“Well, I guess it's easier, where I come from, to express these disagreements.”

“You haven't told me anything about yourself that is interesting. Everybody in America is anti-Communist, so what makes you so special that I changed other plans in order to have dinner with you?”

“Maybe the fascination I feel for you.”

The wine came, and the menu. She managed to talk even while going over it and expressing her preferences. “The lyulya kebab is quite good, also the ham, and the shashlik. You were going to tell me how you picked up French.”

“I was going to tell you that my French is only just good enough to get me through French-speaking restaurants. Are there such things in Moscow?”

“No. Here and there are peons who speak French.”

“
What
did you call them?”

“Peons.”

“An odd word. You mean peon as in the kind of person who works for slavemasters?”

“Roughly. Are you going to make an ideological point? All right. I'll call them serfs.”

“French-speaking serfs working in Moscow restaurants.”

“You are being provocative.”

“I didn't mean to be. Were you ever married?”

“No. Were you?”

“Yes. My wife died five months ago.”

“Children?”

“No. A stepson. My wife was married before. Her husband was shot by a Cuban Communist.”

“That's too bad.”

“I thought it so, yes.”

“But then you married her and adopted the son?”

“That's right. How is it you are not married?”

“Maybe I know too much about men's insides. You were told—or were you not?—that I am a urologist?”