Three huge double windows overlooked the street. As time went on, Capa posted himself in the windows more and more, photographing little incidents that happened under our windows. Across the street, on the second floor, there was a man who ran a kind of camera repair shop. He worked long hours on equipment. And we discovered late in the game that while we were photographing him, he was photographing us.
Our bathroom, and we were the glory of Moscow for having a private one, had certain peculiarities. The entrance was difficult, for one could not open the door simply and go in, because the door was interfered with by the bathtub. One stepped inside, crouched back in the corner beside the washstand, closed the door, and then one was free to move about. The bathtub was not evenly set on its legs, so that once filled, if one moved suddenly, the whole thing swayed and water slopped out on the floor.
It was an old bathtub, probably pre-revolutionary, and its enamel had been worn off on the bottom, leaving a surface a little like sand-paper. Capa, who is a delicate creature, found that he began to bleed after a bath, and he took to wearing shorts in the tub.
This bathroom had a peculiarity which was true of all the bathrooms we experienced in the Soviet Union. There may be other kinds, but we did not find them. Whereas all the taps leaked-the toilet, the basin, the bathtub faucets-all the drains were completely watertight. Consequently, if you filled the basin, the water stayed there, and when you pulled the plug out of the bathtub drain, it had no effect at all in allowing the water to escape. And in one hotel in Georgia the roar of water escaping from the taps was so great that we had to close the bathroom door to get any sleep. It was from this that I made my great invention, which I offered to turn over to heavy industry. It is very simple. Reverse the process: put the taps where the drains are, and the drains where the taps are, and the whole thing would be solved.
But our bathroom did have one very fine quality. There was always plenty of hot water in it, sometimes mostly on the floor, but it was there when we wanted it.
It was here that I discovered an unpleasant quality in Capa's nature, and I think it only right to set it down in case some young woman should ever listen to any suggestion of matrimony from him. He is a bathroom hog, and a very curious one. His method is as follows: He rises from his bed and disappears into the bathroom and draws a tub of water. He then lies in that tub of water and reads until he becomes sleepy, whereupon he goes to sleep. This may go on for two or three hours in the morning, and it can be readily seen that the bathroom is immobilized for any more serious purposes while he is in there. I offer this information about Capa as a public service. With two bathrooms, Capa is a charming, intelligent, good-tempered companion. With one bathroom, he is a-
Already we had been subjected to the intricacies of Russian money. It had several values, official and non-official. The official rate was five roubles to one dollar. The American Embassy rate was twelve roubles to one dollar. But you could buy roubles on the black market for fifty roubles to one dollar, and certain South American legations bought roubles in other countries, like Poland or Czechoslovakia, for a hundred roubles to one dollar. The American Embassy, which maintained strict honesty in this matter of twelve to one, was criticized by some of its employees for making things very expensive. For example, if a member of our Embassy gave a party, it was vastly expensive at twelve to one, while a member of one of the aforementioned embassies could give a party at a hundred to one, and the party was incredibly cheap.
When we registered at the Savoy Hotel we were, issued ration tickets, three for each day, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. By using these tickets in the ration restaurant in the hotel we could eat quite reasonably. If we wanted to eat in a commercial restaurant, the food was very expensive, and not very much better. The beer was sour, and very expensive. It averaged about a dollar and a half a bottle.
In the afternoon Voks sent a car to take us to the main office for an interview. It was our impression that there had been some battle about who was to be responsible for us, the Writer's Union or Voks. And Voks had lost and got us. The Voks offices are in a beautiful little palace, which was once the home of a merchant prince. We were received by Mr. Karaganov in his office, which is oak-paneled to the ceiling and has a stained-glass skylight-a very pleasant place to work. Mr. Karaganov, a young blond, careful man, who spoke a precise, slow English, sat behind his desk and asked us many questions. He doodled on a pad with a pencil, one end of which was blue and the other red. And we explained our project, which was to avoid politics, but to try to talk to and to understand Russian farmers, and working people, and market people, to see how they lived, and to try to tell our people about it, so that some kind of common understanding might be reached. He listened quietly and made angular marks with his pencil.
Then he said, "There have been other people who wanted to do this." And he named a number of Americans who have since written books about the Soviet Union. "They have sat in this office," he said, "and have spoken in one way, and then they have gone home and have written in another way. And if we seem to have a mild distrust, it is because of this."
"You must not think that we came either favorably or unfavorably," we replied. "We came to do a job of reporting, if it is possible to do it. We intend to set down and to photograph exactly what we see and hear, with no editorial comment. If there is something we don't like, or don't understand, we will set that down too. But we came for a story. If we can do the story we came for, we will do it. If we can't do it, we still have a story."
He nodded very slowly and thoughtfully. "This we could trust," he said. "But we are very tired of people who come here and are violently pro-Russian, and who go back to the United States and become violently anti-Russian. We have had considerable experience with that kind.
"This office, Voks," he continued, "has not very much power, nor very much influence. But we will do what we can to let you do the work that you want to do." Then he asked us many questions about America. He said, "Many of your newspapers are speaking of war with the Soviet Union. Do the American people want war with the Soviet Union?
"We don't think so," we answered. "We don't think any people want war, but we don't know."
He said, "Apparently the only voice speaking loudly in America against war is that of Henry Wallace. Can you tell me what his following is? Has he any real backing among the people?"
We said, "We don't know. But this we do know, that in one speaking tour Henry Wallace collected in paid admissions an unprecedented amount of money. We do know that this is the first time we have ever heard of that people paid to go to political meetings. And we do know that many people were turned away from these meetings, because there was no place for them to sit or stand. Whether this has any emphasis on the coming elections we have no idea. We only know that we, who have seen a little bit of war, do not favor it. And we feel that there are a great many people like us. We feel that if war is the only answer our leaders can give us, then we indeed live in a poverty-stricken time." And then we asked, "Do the Russian people, or any section of them, or any section of the Russian government, want war?"
At that he straightened up, put down his pencil, and said, "I can answer that categorically. Neither the Russian people, nor any section of them, nor any section of the Russian government, wants war. I can go further than that-the Russian people would do almost anything to avoid war. Of this I am certain." And he took up his pencil again and made round doodles on his pad.
"Let us speak of American writing," he said. "It seems to us that your novelists don't believe in anything any more. Is this true?"