Parachutes and Kisses (57 page)

Minutes passed. The plane completed its ascent. Little by little a funny smell reached Isadora's nostrils. She turned around to see great clouds of black smoke issuing from the galley. The stewardesses had set fire to lunch!

“They've set the plane on fire!” Isadora said to Glotarchuk.

“I am sure proper authorities will remedy situation,” said he, turning paler than usual.

A co-pilot burst out of the cockpit, ran to the back, tore a fire extinguisher from the wall. He was followed by another co-pilot. Isadora turned around to look. The galley was full of people all struggling in the smoke to get a fire extinguisher to work. Although the plane was now filling with clouds of black smoke, not a word of explanation was offered to the passengers.

Isadora gazed into the depths of the vodka bottle where the genie of calmness resided. At that moment of absurdity beyond despair, when the whole inside of the plane reeked of burnt blini, burnt upholstery, soggy carpets, these lines came to her:

Was she becoming Russian? She felt powerless to do anything but stare into her vodka bottle!

Glotarchuk looked disdainfully at Isadora for having taken ref uge in the vodka.

“Would you like some?” she asked.

“Wodka is no answer,” said Glotarchuk like some beastly Soviet social worker.

“Are you crazy? It keeps the plane aloft! In the USA, no one would fly without alcohol.”

Her guide gave her one of those “aha—I knew it!” looks that always signaled his views of American culture. Terrified as he was, he was congratulating himself on the superiority of the Soviet system because the Soviets did not serve alcohol on their airplanes —except of course to the crew. “Air travel in the U.S. is
wonderful,”
Isadora said.
(What
had she
said?
Was she
mad?)
She was suddenly lost in a reverie about American airline travel and its peculiar joys. How cunning were those little trays of reconstituted food! How munificent were the beauteous stewardesses who dispensed the flowing liquor! How stalwart the captains with their manly Marl boro-man accents, their broad shoulders reminiscent of American football victories, their turned-up WASP noses, their long, virile strides, their wonderful hats filled with golden spaghetti ... Russia was really driving her bonkers if she was nostalgic for American airline travel, airline
food,
and even the IRS! There was no telling
what
she would miss next. Would she start missing Conrail and Amtrak? Would she grow nostalgic for the Long Island Ex pressway at five P.M. on a Friday night? The subway at rush hour? The lower reaches of Forty-second Street where the vomit and jerk-off houses are? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! She missed them like crazy. She yearned for the blessed silver birds of Pan Am, the gorgeous blue-tailed jets of Eastern, the regal wide-bodies of TWA with their crimson markings. She, who had so often cursed American planes, who booked all her trips around DC-10s (and sometimes got stuck with them anyway), was now madly in love with
all
the airlines of her native land. Let them fly DC-10s! Let them fly
anything
at all! Their food was manna, their service bliss, their politeness legendary. If one trip on Aeroflot could do
this
to her, imagine the state she'd be in by the time she left this godforsaken country—
if
that time ever arrived. Every American leftist should be forced to fly Aeroflot, Isadora concluded—or try to get served tea in the snack bar of a Russian airport. Russian snack bars made even Chock Full o‘Nuts seem like havens of racial amity and humanity—not to mention McDonald's and Burger King, which now appeared more gracious than the old Pavillon in its heyday. One week in Russia and her politics were slightly to the right of William F. Buckley!

The commotion in the aisles of the plane had become a parade by now and the black smoke was still belching forth.

“Why don't they announce what the problem is?” Isadora asked her guide.

“It would only make things worse,” said Glotarchuk stolidly. “People would be nervous.”

“And they're not nervous now?” Isadora said. “Are you kidding?”

“It is Russian proverb: ‘If they're beating you by hand, be glad they're not beating you by stick.' ”

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Isadora, “now I know where my grandfather's whole philosophy of life came from—submission, submission, submission—that's all you ever talk about ...”

“What do you mean
submission,”
asked Glotarchuk, “and who is Jesus H. Christ?”

“Don't you people believe in
optimism?
Don't you believe in
action?”

Glotarchuk looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Here—hold this,” said Isadora, handing him her vodka bottle (in which one lone red pepper bobbed).

She flew out of her seat and ran to the back of the plane, where no fewer than five coughing people were trying to get a fire extinguisher to work. One of the co-pilots had apparently cut his arm on a metal band that had once held the extinguisher to the wall, and two clumsy stewardesses were trying to bandage him. The black smoke was still billowing out.

“Can I help?” Isadora asked.

Baffled looks—since none of them spoke a word of English.

Isadora seized the fire extinguisher out of one of the stewardess' arms, pulled the pin, squeezed the handle, and began spraying foam in the direction of the stove.

“Open the door of the stove,” she shouted—but nobody knew what she meant.

The stewardess wrestled the fire extinguisher back and began uselessly spraying foam on the
outside
of the closed stove, as the steward before had done. Meanwhile, one burly steward and someone who looked like a co-pilot grabbed Isadora by the armpits and dragged her bodily back to her seat. Did this mean she would be arrested on arrival in Odessa and interned in the USSR forever? What matter—since the plane would probably blow up long before they arrived anywhere
near
the Black Sea!

“What have you been doing?” a very panicky Glotarchuk asked. He was responsible for her and her behavior in his country, so he was understandably concerned. So what! They would probably die together anyway, this curious duo, this oddest of odd couples, this inverted reprise of
Ninotchka.

“I tried to show them how to get the goddamned fire extinguisher unstuck—then they wouldn't even let me point it at the base of the flames. It won't do any
good
if they just keep spraying it randomly around the galley. They have to
open
the stove and spray the foam at the
base
of the flames. Trust me—I'm not terribly technologically minded, but I
do
know how to operate a fire extinguisher. Living alone in the country with a little kid teaches you a
few
things! Please, Vladimir,
please
go back there and tell them that they have to open the stove and foam the inside. And please tell them to point it
under
the names—would you?”

“It would be arrogant of me to presume to tell captain what he will do.”

“It would be stupid of you to sit here and let the plane blow up just because you're afraid of what they'll think of you. I'd do it myself, but I can't speak Russian.”

Reluctantly, timidly, like a schoolboy who is afraid of being struck, Glotarchuk got up and shuffled to the back of the plane. Isadora took his aisle seat and craned her neck to watch. She saw Glotarchuk tap the captain on the shoulder and begin talking to him rather diffidently. She saw the captain listening. She saw them open the stove—whereupon the smoke became denser. But that was all Isadora could see.

By now all the passengers were sputtering and coughing. Some were praying. Others were sitting quietly, gripping their armrests with white knuckles. There was no doubt they were done for. But what did Isadora feel at that moment?—she who had so often imagined death in flight? She knew that if she died on an Aeroflot flight, her death might not even be reported to her next of kin. And yet, all she felt was a terrific sense of lightness, of transparency. All anxiety was gone, somehow, as she prayed to the Goddess to take care of Amanda, take care of Bean, take care of her parents and sisters. So this was her personal Babi Yar! So be it. To go home to Mother Russia to die. What a strange karma. To die at forty, having produced one masterpiece—Amanda. (Oh, she would also stand behind
Tintoretto's Daughter.
That book, she thought, would last, as would some of her poems—though who ever knew for sure about one's own work?)

Glotarchuk returned. “They have put out flames,” he said, “now it is only smoke without fire, contrary to Russian proverb.”

“Are you sure?” asked Isadora.

“Absolutely,” said Glotarchuk, “I showed them how.” He said this smugly, taking Isadora's seat near the window and refastening his belt.

“Oh did you?” asked Isadora. “Are you about to become a Hero of Socialist Labor?”

“I think they are grateful,” he said. And sure enough the two co-pilots and four stewardesses were proceeding down the aisle to congratulate him. They slapped Glotarchuk on the back heartily, babbling congratulatory greetings.

“I am satisfied,” Glotarchuk said when they had gone. “I have —how do you say?—saved the day!”

Isadora smiled hatefully at her guide. She would almost rather they had crashed.

 

At the Odessa airport, Isadora and Glotarchuk were met by a contingent of Odessa Writers' Union dignitaries, headed by Mikhail Berezny, a bluff, white-haired, pink-cheeked fellow with blazing blue eyes, who looked amazingly like some of Isadora's own Russian-Jewish relatives (particularly those she had met on childhood sojourns in the environs of Golders Green).

“Madame Poet,” said Mikhail, presenting Isadora with the requisite wilted roses and the damp packet of rubles (expense money courtesy of the Soviet state), “your fame has preceded you. We have been reading and reading your
great
poems to your grandfather, which were sent to us by our colleagues in Kiev.”

(How ironic it was that here in Russia, where her books were prohibited, her few lines of hastily translated poetry were almost more valued than in her native country, where volumes and volumes were freely available. In Russia everyone craved books, and no one could get them. In America, the best books piled up on the remainder tables while the populace played Pac-Man.)

“Thank you,” said Isadora, “thank you.” She accepted the roses and rubles and was ushered into a waiting car—courtesy of the Writers' Union—for transportation to the Black Sea Hotel. Checking to see if her luggage was with her, Isadora noticed that it had been tagged “Addis Ababa” rather than “Odessa”—and yet somehow it had
arrived!
Ah, the Goddess has plans for us (and our luggage) that she does not divulge. Our fates are in her (baggage-handling) hands!

First impressions of Odessa: the whole city smelled of sea and mildew. Its atmosphere was boisterous, Jewish, Breughelesque. Even Kiev seemed goyish and reserved by comparison, and Moscow icy and arctic.

Mikhail Berezny was Jewish. He was the first Russian she had met who peppered his speech with Yiddishisms. (Oh there had been one official KGB Jew at the conference in Kiev—the one who had been assigned to seduce her and had failed—but he was more Russian than the goyim and never would have risked the colorful abyss of Yiddish. His job description was Official State Jew, and he went around the conference swearing that the Russians were
not
antisemitic—just anti-Zionist—and praising the PLO.) Here, on the contrary, Mikhail was proud of his Jewishness; he might even have admitted to Zionism, if pushed. Isadora was not about to push him, though.

“Welcome to the most Jewish city in Russia,” he said, ushering Isadora out of the car at the Black Sea Hotel, “our beloved Odessa. We welcome you home as if you were a daughter of our city.”

The hotel lobby was swarming with East German tourists, and even some American Jewish tour groups in search of roots. Isadora and Glotarchuk discovered that their rooms would not be available for them until much later. In view of that fact, Mikhail suggested that they check their luggage at the desk and make an excursion to the Black Sea itself, since this was presumably why people came to Odessa. Isadora and her guide hastily removed bathing suits from their Addis Ababa—tagged luggage and followed Mikhail back into the waiting car. (The other members of the welcoming committee dispersed, pleading other engagements; they would all regroup later at the opera.)

The ride to the Black Sea was breakneck and torturous. Mikhail talked on and on about the sunny southernness of Odessa—the Naples of Russia. And indeed, Isadora could detect something of the boisterousness of southern Italy, the mildewed sea smell of old resorts along the Amalfi coast, the openness and rowdiness of people who were determined, with the desperation of New Year's Eve revelers, to have a good time.

When they came to the seashore, they parked at the top of a steep dune and half-slid, half-walked down to the beach. There, beyond a wall of porcine, virtually naked people, Isadora could see that brackish blue-green apparition itself, the Black Sea. It was the sea where Jason sailed to seek the Golden Fleece, where the
Potemkin
had sailed into history, where her grandfather had first sniffed liberty and found it sweet.

Several huge women, with mountainous bellies and triple rolls of fat at their sides, stood planted in the sand conversing. One of them, monumental legs spread wide and rooted in the sand, methodically chewed little nuts and spat them out at syncopated intervals. Isadora hadn't seen so many huge women since her days in Germany. It was as if the Black Sea were bounded by a wall of women who guarded it against entrance like gorgons.