When our stomachs were beginning to bulge with food, the manager of the farm caught up with us. He was a tall, straight, spare man, in a partisan uniform and a stiff cap. He asked us to stop by at his house for a bite to eat, God help us! We explained, through Chmarsky and another interpreter, that about one more bite to eat and we would explode. It was returned to us that it was only a token bite, and that he would take it as a great courtesy if we would visit his house and have a glass of wine with him.
We had just about begun to believe that Russia's secret weapon, toward guests at least, is food. But we surely could not refuse to have a bite to eat and a glass of wine. And so we went with him to his house, a neat little house on a hill.
And we should have known. There were more people standing about on the neat clipped grass of his yard than were justified by a simple bite to eat and a glass of wine. Two handsome girls came out of the house with jugs of water. They poured it over our hands, we washed our faces and hands. The girls held out white towels embroidered in red for us to dry ourselves.
And then we were invited to step into the house. Through a hallway we went, and into a large room. The room was hung with woven materials in brilliant colors; some of the designs reminded us of Indian blanketry. The floor was covered with a kind of matting, rather like Mexican petate. It was the vision of the table that nearly killed us. It was about fourteen feet long, and it was loaded with food, and there were about twenty guests. I think it is the only meal or dinner we ever attended where fried chicken was an hors d'oeuvre, and where each hors d'oeuvre was half a chicken. It went from there to a cold boiled chicken over which was poured a cold green sauce, delicious with spices and sour cream. And then there were cheese sticks and tomato salads and Georgian pickles. And then there was a savory stew of lamb, with a thick sauce. And then there was a kind of fried country cheese. There were loaves of flat Georgian rye bread piled up like poker chips, and the center of the table was loaded with fruit, with grapes, and pears, and apples. And the frightful thing about it was that everything was delicious. The flavors were all new, and we wanted to taste all of them. And we were nearly dying of overeating. Capa, who prides himself on a thirty-two-inch waist, and who will not let out his belt, no matter what happens, was getting a puffed look under the chin, and his eyes were slightly popped and bloodshot. And I felt that if I could just go two or three days without eating anything, I might return to normal.
I remembered and finally understood a story that had been told me by an Englishman. He was sent to America during the war on some kind of purchasing job, and he had headed toward the Middle West. And every place he went he was stuffed. He ate three and four dinners a day. His luncheons sank him, and between meals people slipped things into his mouth. They were sorry for him because there was so little food in England. They wanted to feed him up so that he could last a while just on his accumulated fat. At the end of three days he was ill, but he had to keep going. At the end of a week he was in desperate condition. His stomach, which was used to the austere food of England, was in complete revolt, and as he got sick the people got sorrier and sorrier for his hunger, and fed him more and more. At first, being an honest man, he tried to ex-plain that so much food was killing him, but that was just disbelieved. And then he lied a little bit, and said he didn't feel right about eating so much food when his people at home did not have such good things. And they laughed at him for that, and he had to go on eating. He said that at his approach to a farm the massacre of chickens was pitiful, and that he himself had found feathers on his razor when he shaved in the morning. At the end of a two weeks' visit, he collapsed and was taken to a hospital where they pumped him out. And the doctor warned him that in his condition, even though he felt terribly hungry, he shouldn't eat too much. And he laughed crazily, and turned over, and buried his head in the pillow. At the time I had thought this story was an overstatement, but more and more I was beginning to believe that it was an exact story.
We were introduced to the twenty guests, and we sat down. And here our problem began. If we did not eat, we were urged to eat, and if we did eat, our plates were replenished instantly. And meanwhile the decanters of local wine were passed, and it was a delicious wine, light and full of flavor, and it probably saved our lives. After a few glasses of wine our host stood up, and his wife came from the kitchen and stood beside him, a handsome black-eyed woman with a strong face. The manager drank our health, and drank the health of the United States. And then he appointed his best friend table-master, and this, we were told, is an old Georgian country custom, that the host appoints his friend the master of speeches. And from then on no toast may be made by anyone at the table. If someone wishes to propose a toast, he must pass the word to the table-master, who is usually chosen because of his ability to make speeches. Then the toast is made by the table-master. This saves the guests a great deal of speaking.
The new table-master made quite a long speech. And it must be remembered that even a short speech was long the way it had to be here, for every sentence had to be translated from Georgian to Russian, and from Russian to English. And God knows what ideas were lost or confused on the way, particularly as this dinner progressed. The table-master was a local farm economist, and after the usual courteous remarks in his first speech he got into his own hobby. He deplored the accidents and the misunderstandings that were forcing the Americans and the Russians apart, and he had, he said, an answer to this, and his answer was trade. He said that a trade treaty should be established between Russia and America, for Russia needed desperately the things that America could manufacture-the farm machinery, the tractors, the trucks, the locomotives. And he suggested that the United States might need some of the things that Russia produced, and he mentioned precious stones, and gold, and wood pulp, and chrome, and tungsten. He had apparently been thinking and brooding on this problem for a long time. It is very probable that he did not know many of the difficulties which stood in the way of such an understanding, and we must admit that we did not know them either.
Since we were foreigners and could not pass a written note to the table-master, we were permitted to answer his toast. And we proposed a toast to the abolishment of curtains of all kinds-of iron curtains, and nylon curtains, and political curtains, and curtains of falsehood, and curtains of superstition. We suggested that curtains were a prelude to war, and that if war should come it could be for only one of two reasons-either through stupidity, or through intent, and if it was through intent on the part of any leaders, then those leaders should be removed, and if it was through stupidity, then the causes should be more closely inspected. And we proposed that since no one, not even the most stupid and belligerent of men, could imagine that a modern war could be won by anyone, then any leader on any side who seriously proposed war should be hunted down as an insane criminal and taken out of circulation. Capa has seen a great deal of war, and I have seen a little, and both of us feel very strongly on the subject.
At the end of our toast the wine fairly leaped from the decanters, and everyone at the table stood up, and everyone insisted on touching his glass to the glass of everyone else at the table. And there was the intimate Georgian toast. Each man holding a glass links his arm with his neighbor's arm and drinks from his own glass. The women leaned in from the kitchen, and around the entranceway the neighbors had gathered, and the wine decanters were passed out to them. The Georgians we met are like the Welsh. In any group of, say, ten men, there would be at least seven fine voices. And at this table now the singing broke out, magnificent choral singing. They sang the songs of the Georgian shepherds of the mountains, and the old fighting songs. And the voices were so good, and the chorus was so good, that they seemed to be almost a professional group, and they were not. And then the tempo quickened, and two men took chairs, and turned them over their knees, and used them for drums, and the dancing started. The women came out of the kitchen and danced, and the men leaped up from the table and danced. And the music was the chorus of male voices, and the patted chair bottoms, and the clapping of hands.