Travels with Myself and Another (36 page)

“How did you ever write your books, Mrs M.?”

“I lay upon the bed and typed with one hand. The typewriter on the bedside table. Ten hours each day.”

She had written two fat books, the second not then published.

“I meant with so many interruptions.”

“There are no interruptions. I do not hear if I am writing. I write very easily.”

Now that we were all sweating around the kitchen table, Mrs M. began a tease that curled my hair for days. She said, “I will emigrate.”

“What?”

“But I wish to take Lena with me; I cannot go without Lena and she is not Jew. I say she must marry a Jew then we can go.”

“Go where?” Oh Lord, I thought, not London.

“I think London.”

“Mrs M., it’s not a bit like Moscow. I mean we don’t drop in on each other, we telephone and make engagements. We don’t visit very long either or ring up all day. I think you’d find it boring, rather cold and sad, not what you’re used to.”

“I must take my furniture,” Mrs M. said dreamily.

“What?”

“This is a very old bench. It has been many generations in my family.”

I didn’t believe it for a minute but refrained from saying that she could buy its cousin if not twin in any of the junk antique shops on the King’s Road beyond World’s End. I saw my future, running errands and keeping company. Already to my relief, I knew I had not come to attend a deathbed but feared I had come to be appointed her private American Express. Daily, she changed her plans. Perhaps Paris for the food and intellectual life. Perhaps Rome would be better for the climate. This tease kept her friends wrought up too, some saying you must not go, you will die of loneliness, some saying she would get good medical treatment abroad. As a worry, the emigration gambit was a great success. She never meant a word of it as I soon guessed. She could no more live outside Russia than I could live in it. Russia is the home of the heart, despite everything. Anywhere else is exile.

Mrs M. said, “I must go to London to be near Anthony Bloom. He is a saint.” Father Anthony is the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in England.

I said irritably, “Since when did you get so religious?”

“Since I have seen Anthony Bloom. Also my grandfather and my father converted.” I didn’t believe that for a minute either.

Yuri whispered,
“Elle croit dans le paradis parce qu’elle veut voir son mari là-haut.”
I felt guilty yet unconvinced. I suspected her Christianity, about which she protested too much. But if her new or old Christian beliefs gave her hope of finding that long-lost man, what difference did it make how she talked.

Mrs M. said, “Solzhenitsyn writes very bad style. He is crazy too.” I didn’t know that they were now talking about Solzhenitsyn but was thoroughly irked and said he was the finest Russian novelist of this century which was also rot because I know nothing of modern Russian literature and the minimum about pre-modern Russian literature. Jealousy is a universal human vice, by no means limited to writers. Mrs M.’s jealousy was not for herself but for her husband; he was to be the only great Russian writer of this century. I was getting hotter, hungrier and crosser every minute.

“Yakir has a complex to be a martyr,” Mrs M. said. These remarks were thrown up like driftwood from waves of Russian talk. As if suddenly Mrs M. remembered me and, assuming I had heard and understood all before, gave me the benefit of her conclusion. Yakir had been arrested; I knew nothing beyond that he was a central figure in the
Chronicle of Current Events,
a secret publication of dissent. I wasn’t clear as to who he was or what the publication was but it seemed enough that the man had dared something and was now in grave trouble.

In America then, we had our own dissent against the Vietnam war. We despised and loathed the policy of our government and were united in a single aim: stop the killing. Anyone who stood up to be counted was a brother. I could not imagine speaking ill of the motives of another dissenting citizen. Not that I would be so firm and fierce if my every word was a passport to Siberia. And yet I was outdone; what did it matter how or whyYakir or Solzhenitsyn or anyone dissented? The whole point was that dissent itself was defiance of fear and an affirmation of the dignity of man.

“What is your opinion of life in Moscow, Marta?”

“I think it is hell.”

That made her laugh and cough; it made them all laugh. “You do not know,” Mrs M. said. “It is paradise now compared to before. Paradise. It has not been so good since 1917. I am a coward, not a fighter. I would like to write a book about how life is today but I am afraid to do it here. I must emigrate to write such a book. I can earn my life as a newspaperwoman, I am a very good newspaperwoman.”

How could she know, I wondered, since she had never been one.

“Intellectuals are very few in this country,” Mrs M. said. “They do not matter for anything. If the people have bread that is all they care about. They have bread now, they are content.”

They sure didn’t look it. I never saw such a glum people. You might think laughter was forbidden by decree of the Politburo and anyone caught smiling got a twenty-rouble fine or twenty days in jail.

“Sinyavsky is becoming a very good writer,” Mrs M. said, as if she was making up her mind about bestowing the Nobel Prize. She was intolerable today with her tease and her pronunciamentos. “Now he is out of the camps at home, he is writing two books at once. I hope they do not learn he is writing again. Masha is wonderful, his wife, you know Marta, she is my friend. But they are afraid to see a foreigner now. Masha earned her life and for her child all the five years and nine months Sinyavsky is in the camps, by making pins and rings from silver.”

Lena exclaimed. Mrs M. turned up the palms of her hands. Her hands are very small and fragile. The palms were lipstick red.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“I do not know. It has not happened before.” She stared at her hands, alarmed too.

Across the table a man was talking and people were actually listening. When he stopped, Mrs M. laughed so hard she cried. “It is a
very
funny joke about Khrushchev.” She had forgotten her hands.

To my relief and joy, I was dining with my American friends. Their flat was high-class housing for the effete foreign bourgeoisie. Palatial compared to Mrs M.’s residence, otherwise very modest: a small living room-dining room, small kitchen and bath, three little bedrooms for them and their three children who were spending the summer in the U.S. They had imported simple Swedish furniture and light-coloured material for curtains and upholstery; the walls were white; it was clean, even cool. Ice in the drinks made me “almost happy.”

They said that their two women servants were sweet and very fond of the children but naturally KGB informers who reported all they heard and saw. The telephone was of course tapped and a bug or bugs planted on the premises. How could they stand it? It would drive me barking mad. Oh no, everyone got used to the rules of the local game; life in Moscow was fascinating, the climate was much better in the winter; the little foreign world was fun and full of friends; unofficial Russians were delightful; one was never bored. But if everything you say is taken down and can be used against you or someone else, doesn’t that make conversation about as bland as cream soup? Well, it made you cautious.

After dinner, we went on an underground sightseeing tour. The Moscow subway stations resemble vast subterranean Turkish baths, with a touch of old-time Roxy movie palaces. Giant murals in mosaic and brilliant paint; statuary in niches, many-coloured marble, pillars and arches. It is the most sumptuous public transport system in the world. Stupefying. Why this opulence below ground when above ground all amenity is lacking? On the other hand, for once I approved the Soviet system; there was not a speck of litter in the subway carriages or stations; not a cigarette butt, not a shred of paper. Perhaps the penalty for dropping litter is the firing squad and if so, maybe it’s not a bad idea, might be worth copying.

Muscovites lined the bench opposite. Riding on subways does not bring out the sparkle in people anywhere but these citizens looked the same on the streets. They cannot all have been dressed in grey, brown, black, but that was the impression. Dull clothes on heavy bodies topped by tired expressionless faces. In this blazing summer, skin was still pale concrete colour. A diet of bread and potatoes? They certainly didn’t look like any people in Western Europe, being built to last rather than for beauty, and well suited to this heavy drab town. I take pleasure everywhere from life on the streets, from faces, from the wild variety of clothes, from unpredictable public behaviour but here, above or below ground, what you got was the blues.

Across from me a small man, smaller and thinner than the general run, green-white rather than pale concrete in colour, was drowning in the depths of drunkenness. Poor little man. His head lolled onto a shoulder to the right, was brushed off like a fly, then lolled to the left, again brushed off. If someone didn’t let him rest a while, I despaired of his future. Why shouldn’t he be dead drunk? I’d be glad to be dead drunk myself except it was too hot to drink. No wonder alcoholism is a prime problem in Russia.

All focusing eyes in this part of the carriage were fixed on me. Surely pants and a T-shirt were not unknown in Moscow?

“What are they staring at?” I asked my hostess.

“Your toenails.”

“Do you mean to say this is the first time they’ve ever seen degenerate Western painted toenails?”

“Looks like it.”

I wanted to amuse Mrs M., do something different, have a party; I also hoped to get a square meal. I called in a taxi to take her to lunch and found that Lena was coming too. “She will not speak,” Mrs M. said apologetically. Dressed up, Mrs M. had shed ten years. She wore a black patterned bandana tight around her head, an embroidered white nylon blouse, a straight grubby mustard-coloured skirt and mustard-coloured corduroy shoes. I had been meaning to ask her why Russian women were so bowlegged, eight out of ten I reckoned, but observed in time that Mrs M. without her enveloping Mother Hubbard house garment had legs so bowed that they formedaVfrom hip to ankle. She looked more stylish than anyone I had seen but her body was typical: a heavy solid torso, hips as wide as shoulders, set like a rock on short muscular legs. I had thought this was a peasant’s shape but Mrs M. had no peasant blood or heritage.

We drove the long distance to the centre of town. Suddenly Mrs M. shivered; I felt her whole body shake. We were passing a huge yellowish edifice. “The KGB,” Mrs M. whispered. I had no time to study it; it looked like an old-fashioned apartment block. She said it had been a hotel (in fact, it had been the office of the All-Russian Insurance Company, heavy irony) and was no longer used as a prison, only for interrogation and headquarters. The sight of the Lubyanka and the attendant memories cast a black pall over our party.

Having vetoed Lena’s choice, the Hotel Rossiya, in appearance a state hospital, the biggest hotel in the world and doubtless the worst, we fetched up at the Armenian Restaurant. For couleur locale, it was a failure, being simply a hot crowded room.

“Oh Lord,” I said, “send us a waiter. Mrs M., if one ever comes, please get something cold to drink right away.”

After a long thirsty half hour, a waiter joined us. There was nothing cold to drink, and no ice. We had to drink something or perish; red wine was available. The menu was a large leather-bound book, its pages spotted with grease and gravy stains. Mrs M. talked; the waiter said
Nyet.

“Mrs M., why not ask him what they do have and we can order from that?”

“I did so ask him. He says No, I must read through the menu.”

“Why?”

Mrs M. shrugged. Her eyes looked bewildered and almost frightened. She sought wordless help from Lena who was blank and useless. Of course she brought that stupid companion along because she was nervous of going alone to an unfamiliar place. I was useless too, since I didn’t know how to handle the situation; anywhere else one would have left in a fury and found another restaurant where the service was acceptable but where did you go in Moscow and I sensed that any sort of scene would be unwise. I should never have pried her away from the safety of her burrow and dragged her out into the oven heat to be bullied by a waiter. Another brute who didn’t have to have a reason why. How I hated this city where you had to take whatever the bastards dished out, in silence.

We smoked like chimneys, she suppressing her cough so as not to make a noticeable noise, me trying miserably to make conversation. In the end we got what was really on the menu, little hard meat balls in a thick brown gravy and red cabbage, both barely warm. I was ready to cry or scream with frustration; how could we force down this rotten food with nothing, not even tap water, to drink. There was no question of reminding the waiter of our order. With dessert, small but welcome portions of ice cream, we were graciously given the bottle of red wine. The red wine was iced.

The wine relaxed Mrs M. and made me slightly tipsy. This was the only time I would see her alone, Lena was no more than an extra chair, and I wanted to hear about her life. Her life was her marriage, nearly nineteen years together and thirty-four years staying alive for the sole purpose of resurrecting her husband from an unmarked unknown grave. In our savage epoch, this is not a unique chronology; she was in a vast company of women with such truncated lives. The difference was in the quality of this particular man and woman, their talent and the intensity of their union.

“You adored him,” I said.

“No, I answered to his love.” She pronounced answered as antsword and looked suddenly very gay.

She talked on: he was a coward who did brave things; sometimes he was afraid of nothing. He was always right, always; she was never bored with him. He did not want her to learn to cook or to clean a house; he wanted her to be at his side. She could never be alone, nor could she have her own friends. Either he stole her friends for himself or threw them out. Her memory of “happy times” was memory of their laughter. She said, “He kept his gaiety to the last day.”