Walking in the Shade (12 page)

While sitting before us, he agreed, when prodded by the chairman, that he certainly did still exist, was well and well-treated, and had seen the error of his ways; he had repented of his negative and critical early work, but he was now engaged on a three-volume novel about the Great Patriotic War, which he hoped would atone for his former crimes.

Mikhail Zoshchenko died quite soon, of illness, not in a camp; so he was more fortunate than many Soviet writers. Arnold and I, discussing the death, tried to hope that what we had thought was a grotesque and silly intervention in his life perhaps in the end had protected him. But I do not think Stalin, who decided these matters, cared about the opinions of “useful idiots.” (Lenin's description of Westerners like us.)

By now there was no pretence that we were a unit. Naomi and Douglas spent their free time, such as there was, together.

Coppard wanted to be with me, to be reassured. He was disturbed by the grimness of Moscow, while delighted by the multitudes of visitors—delegations—from everywhere in the communist world.

But I was mostly with Arnold. We talked, and we talked. How ridiculous it does seem now—that we took ourselves so seriously. Don't forget that on the shoulders of communists rested the future of the entire world. Communists and ‘progressive forces'. It occurs to me now that all adolescents believe this: everything lies in their hands, because adults are such a disaster. Is it possible that this so fundamental belief of the communists was no more than delayed or displaced collective adolescence?

The stress, the pressures, our disagreements, the lack of sleep, the strenuous pace of our engagements, were reducing us to our worst selves, or at least to the extremes of our natures. Richard Mason became more solitary, silent, and exaggerated his philistine pose: ‘I'm sorry, I never go near a theatre or a concert.' Coppard always found in any gathering that sympathetically pretty woman, or untrammelled soul, with whom he talked about how in his youth he had walked by himself all over England—this was often Samuel Marshak, who had walked over Russia as a young man. Coppard told everyone that he loathed politicians, hated the ruling class of his country, loved communism. Douglas Young's enormous height and kilt called forth storms of applause as he talked, whenever he could, about the ground-down Scots. Naomi's upper-class drawl become more intolerable with every day. ‘But the poor things, they simply
must
learn better.' Arnold became more emotional and was often in tears. There was every opportunity for tears. They took us to a dance hall, to see how the people enjoyed themselves. This was Moscow's main amusement hall. It was an ugly, poor place. A band played 1930s dance music. And not a man in sight, not one, only women and girls, dancing together. ‘Why no men?' we asked, stupidly. And Oksana said, ‘But the men were all killed in the war.' For she had no man, nor expected to marry: just like my mother's generation, whose men were dead.

Arnold wept, and I became bossy-boots, more so with every hour.

Arnold and I, sitting in my plushy suite, every word we said monitored, decided it wasn't good enough, we could not stand any more of the official rhetoric; the trouble with the Russians was they hadn't had enough contact with the outside world, they did not know how to talk simply, in a human way. What we had to do—we decided after long discussion—was to frame a question which would force Alexei Surkov to answer truthfully, bypassing the jargon. And this was the question we came up with: ‘Always, in every society, even in the most rigid, new ideas appear, are usually regarded as reprehensible or even seditious, but then become accepted, only to be swept aside in their turn by ideas at first considered heretical. How does the Soviet Union allow for this inevitable process, which prevents cultures going rotten, or stultified?' If these were not the exact words—I believe they were—this was the sense of the question. Arnold and I found a moment when Surkov was not surrounded by henchmen. We said we wanted to put a question that was of the greatest importance to us. He listened carefully, nodded (with the sternness demanded by the Soviet style), and said, ‘Yes, that's a very good question,' and he would give us our reply tomorrow, when we went to Yasnaya Polyana. This was Tolstoy's estate, a place of pilgrimage. We did actually expect a real answer.

We drove, several cars, out into the country, and on the roads were local people selling wild strawberries. The officials all bought them, and particularly Boris Polevoi, who though not an official was with us in Moscow. He was an applauded writer of novels about the Great Patriotic War. Konstantin Simonov was also there. He had just produced a volume of love poems, officially accepted, though love poems were considered daring and Stalin himself had said he thought that such effusions should surely be confined to the bedroom. This remark was being quoted often, as a sign of the great man's paternal interest in the arts. Boris was an attractive man, boyish, enthusiastic, and he went everywhere on a motorcycle, which fact was rubbed in at every opportunity: here is this important and honoured writer, but he is not too good to go about on a motorcycle. At Tolstoy's place we saw his house, which, if you think that this man was an aristocrat and a member of Russia's top society, was astonishing, because it is not large and yet it had in it so many relations, children, servants, visitors. Above all, it is poorly furnished, and the sofa on which the countess gave birth so often stands in an ordinary public room and might have been designed for maximum discomfort.

The woods and fields are wonderful. The table for lunch was long, for about thirty people, and set out under the trees. Surkov's daughter was there, a merry, pretty girl, her father's pet: he could not take his eyes off her and showed her off to us. She remarked she was going on a trip to polar regions, and the romanticism of the communist imagination at once seized Arnold, who asked if she was going on an expedition to the North Pole, for no less could be expected of a Soviet maiden. She laughed prettily and said no, she was going with school friends to visit some picturesque place. It is only when I recall moments like this that I can put myself back into that atmosphere of heroic expectation which was the air of communism.

Arnold and I were waiting for Surkov's reply, and when nothing had happened and it was time to leave, we invited him to come aside with us. But he stood his ground. Not moving even a step away from his officials, he raised his voice, so that everybody in sight had to turn and look, and, lifting his clenched right fist, orated, ‘The Soviet Union under the guidance of the great leader Comrade Joseph Stalin will always make the correct decisions, based on Marxist principles.' He did not meet our eyes. This, obviously, was what he had been told to say, after the KGB, having listened to our earnest prattle, had worked out a formula of no danger to Surkov or to themselves. He was also saying something about his own position, but that I am afraid only too obvious fact I did not see for some time—years.

Arnold and I discussed this reply and decided we had expected too much. We were part of an official delegation, and he was the main representative of the Party during this visit.

We discussed, too, whenever we could, Stalin and their attitudes to him. This was a time when a version of the following appeared constantly, in short stories, novels, reminiscences: ‘My tractor/motorbike/harvester/car had broken down. I was standing by the road, wondering what to do, when suddenly I saw standing in front of me a simple-looking kindly man, with honest eyes. “Is something wrong, comrade?” I pointed at the machine. He indicated the carburetor/engine/brakes/tyres. “I think you'll find the cause lies there.” He smiled, with stern kindness, nodded, and walked on. I realised this was Comrade Stalin, the man who had sacrificed his life to be of service to the Russian people.'

My attitude towards Comrade Stalin by that time was less than reverential. But Arnold could not bear to hear a word against him: he was one of those who believed the truth was being concealed from Stalin by his colleagues. Arnold was suffering because of the many ‘mistakes' the Party was making. He was a man who needed to respect authority, just as I needed to oppose it. He was a homosexual, he confided—hardly a surprise—and said that before this trip he had gone to Harry Pollitt, the Communist Party boss, and told him he was worried, visiting the Soviet Union as a homosexual. Harry Pollitt had consulted with his mates. Their decision was that it was all right, the Party would stand by him, but any approach by spies, pretty boys, and so forth should be at once reported to them. Arnold was emotional about this. It was then illegal in Britain to be a homosexual: people could and did go to prison. Many years ahead was the tolerant attitude we take for granted. That ‘the Party itself' should stand by him was, I believe, why Arnold remained a Communist when other people left in droves. I admired Harry Pollitt and his colleagues too: it could not have been easy for these conventional, respectable working-class men to accept Arnold.

Almost the last place we were taken to was a summer holiday camp for children. We knew it was a show place. Oksana and the others insisted that every child in the Soviet Union went for six weeks of the summer to a camp just as good as this one. It was a pretty well-run place, full of charming girls, in pinafores and braids, and well-mannered boys. What struck us was the library, stocked with Russian, English, and French classics. Everywhere on the little beds, and in the public rooms, lay Tolstoy, Chekhov, and translated English books too. ‘Our children read only the best.' And this was true all over the country? Yes, we were assured. Of course we discussed this. It was true that everyone we met knew as much about English literature as we did and that people could be seen reading their classics on the underground. The ‘contradiction' was this: these people lived in a country where every moment of their lives was governed by a senseless brutal rhetoric. Yet they were being brought up on the humanist tradition. A single volume of Tolstoy would contradict everything they were officially being taught.

I think that literature—a novel, a story, even a line of poetry—has the power to destroy empires. ‘
And their packs infest the age
.'

Once upon a time, there was the Russian intelligentsia, cultivated in music, art, and literature: we know about it from a thousand novels and plays. Viciously and consistently attacked through the communist era, these people survived, carefully conserving their heritage. But, it seems, this is no longer true, for when communism collapsed, in flooded the worst of western products, pornography and violence, and what remained of the heritage collapsed too. A unique culture has gone, one that truly inspired the world.

We were invited to go to Samarkand, but Naomi said she had to be back at a council meeting in Argyll. This had the deliberate frivolity, cocking the snook, of Douglas Young's kilt, or Richard Mason's ‘I think on the whole I preferred Lourdes.'

There was a touch of the surreal about that invitation, but what could match, for improbability, the great sky-high propaganda banners decorating Red Square:
DRINK MORE CHAMPAGNE
! For as always, the government was trying to combat the demon drink, and champagne was considered a step up towards health from vodka. Or the overheard chat among the officials, during those interminable banquets, about the superior charms of holidays on the Black Sea. ‘My wife just
adores
the way they do the sturgeon.'

It was not all collective farms and People's Palaces and speeches. There was
The Red Poppy
, a ballet of political exhortation, but hardly boring, for its hypocrisies included a scene of a decadent capitalist nightclub, enabling the audience to enjoy what it was ordered to despise: those faces, avid, envious, condemning, as they watched the writhing nudity. But the audiences for the opera
Ivan Susasin
were a different matter: here was the other Russia, preserving itself. What singing, what music! But for us the production already had the charms of the past, for it was realistic to the point where you could count the leaves on the trees. In this opera, the hero, a peasant, a man of the people, defies the invaders of Mother Russia and dies to save his Czar. Some of the audience wept quietly throughout, and of all the impressions of that fevered fortnight, it was this one that spoke direct to the heart about the Great Patriotic War and what it had meant to these people.

There was an evening at the flat of Frank Johnson, a British newspaper man in Moscow. All foreigners visited that flat. He made no secret of his Soviet sympathies, and it seems he was KGB all the time. He was an affable public man. His wife was a Russian beauty. It was there I heard from the Russians, including her, remarks like ‘I hate black people' and, like any white madam in Southern Africa, ‘I wouldn't drink out of a cup a black had used. I'd disinfect it.' Also Russian talk about their non-Russian republics—Georgia, Uzbekistan, the Baltic States, and so forth—just like Southern African whites: ‘They'd be nothing without us.' ‘We support them.' ‘They're very backward.' ‘I don't think we ought to let them into Russia.'

When we were being driven back to the airport, at night, this happened. In the back of our car were Oksana, Arnold, and I, while Douglas Young sat by the chauffeur. A man staggered out into the headlights on a half-dark road. The car swerved but hit him. We all jumped out. A peasant lay bleeding, spread-eagled. He was very drunk. Oksana, transformed into an angel of vengeance, said we should leave him on the road, to punish him. We insisted on bringing him into the car, where he lay in Arnold's arms, dazed, incoherent, bleeding. Arnold wept, while cradling him with a passionate protectiveness. It was all of the Soviet Union he held there, the millions of the dead, the women without men, the pathetic war-wracked streets. I knew this was what he felt, because I did too. Oksana kept up a high, vindictive scolding all the way to the airport: ‘How dare you do this, these are distinguished foreign guests, how dare you insult our great country, you will be punished for this, you should be ashamed.' Douglas Young translated, in a satiric voice. This was the most bizarre of all the scenes on that trip, a summing-up and a caricature—the drunk, bleeding man, the Soviet nanny-shrew, Arnold's weeping, Douglas's Scottish voice, deliberately exaggerated, full of bitterness, full of anger, an indictment, and I interrupting Oksana: ‘But you will take him to the hospital when we get to the airport, promise? You will, won't you?'