Then several friends in the hostel told us they had been called in for questioning—a friendly chat, apparently, in the blank-faced office block on Plekhanov Street.
“So, how’s life in the hostel?” the officer would ask. “Are Ira and Joe still together? Are they getting on well? Emily and Yuri, they going to get married? Or not? Eh?”
This sounded implausible to me. Surely, in these times of economic crisis, even the KGB had to earn a living. What was the sense in paying these pathetic juniors—Cinderellas in brown suits—to stay late at the office, copying out reports of our student parties? On the other hand, of course, the thought of files marked with our names being filled with details of hostel life was wonderfully comical, not to say glamorous. Perhaps they would be forwarded to Moscow, where some smooth-cheeked colonel would tap my documents, gaze out of the window and mutter, “Hmm, Charlotte Hobson… she sounds interesting.” It added a piquancy to life to imagine a secret biographer at our backs. We felt we had to keep providing him with material.
Yet—and with this thought the comedy turned a little sour—who was passing on information from the hostel? We assumed it was one of the duties of the komendant to keep the security forces up to date. But that didn’t stop the rumors. Almost the day we arrived, somebody took us aside and whispered: “See him over there? He’s KGB. Don’t trust him.” One of the British girls seemed unerringly to fall in love with them: the stringy, scrawny one; the one with black hair and a face like a hatchet; the kindly, plump one. According to the gossip, all of them were KGB.
Mitya hated the whole business. “Only a sovok would believe all that stuff,” he said. A sovok: someone who lived in the old Soviet way, fearful, credulous, boot-licking, deceitful. “All that is irrelevant now.”
He was right, of course. And yet we couldn’t help listening to the stories when they came around.
We had a party on what remained of my parcel. A brown-eyed Russian called Peanut brought a couple of American students, Bill and Leda. Leda was wild. She looked like a swan: a long, taut neck and white skin which seemed barely to conceal the movement of her bones. She had black hair and sharp red lips and when she entered a room, you could feel fear and excitement rising in all the men. The gossip in the hostel had nothing but admiration for her.
Bill, on the other hand, was a clean-cut, tidy boy who was lodging with Peanut’s family. He did not touch alcohol or nicotine, was conscientious about hygiene, and insisted on respect for the American flag. After college, he told us, he wanted to join the army. It was just the sort of behavior that set tongues wagging. Somebody—as usual, no one knew who’d said it first—suggested that Bill’s army ambitions meant something more specific. Intelligence, they said. Look how cagey he is, doesn’t drink. That’s always suspicious. Before long the consensus was that he was CIA. There’s always one, people said. Believe us, it’s sure to be him. He’s bright, he keeps in training. There was no end of evidence once you got to thinking about it.
The rumors did Bill no harm; on the contrary, he became an object of curiosity. Everyone invited him to their parties and tried to persuade him to accept a glass of vodka. Men encouraged him to talk about the U.S. Army. Girls sat on his lap and asked him questions, and Bill’s scrubbed face took on the permanent, amiable smile of the popular guy. Leda was the only one with the power to remove it: with an arch of her eyebrows, she could confuse him. But she, too, was intrigued.
“Come on, guys.” Leda sat on my bed between Peanut and Bill, the two roommates. She leaned over to fill the glasses around her, the line of her bare arm gleaming in the half dark. “Drink with me. To New York City, am I glad to leave that place.”
“You know I don’t drink,” said Bill. His T-shirt revealed his pectorals; sitting quietly, he looked helpless, his big pink hands turned upward on his lap. Leda just flared her nostrils a fraction and laughed.
“Darling, we’re not in Atlanta now. We’re in Russia, we drink.”
Bill looked at her, embarrassed. “Give me a break, would you?”
Peanut stepped in. “OK, New York,” he repeated. “To Brighton Beach, where all the Russians with any sense have gone already.”
“Brighton Beach!” we echoed, and drank.
That evening I found myself watching the three of them: Peanut, leaning across and whispering to Leda, making her laugh; Leda, eyes glittering, letting her hand rest on Bill’s knee. Bill sat between them like a great clean baby and blushed as Leda teased him about his biceps.
“I like a man with an arm measurement the size of my waist,” she said. “Let’s see—can you raise a shot glass to your mouth, or will you let me help you?”
At last Bill gave in as everyone knew he would and accepted some vodka. Everyone does—it is almost impossible to resist the collective will of Russians urging you to drink. It soon becomes clear that it is simply self-centered of you to keep on refusing. How can you think of your work, your sleep, your liver when all your friends are ruining their careers and their health so much faster and more conclusively than you? What kind of person keeps a clear head to observe his comrades drinking away their youth? You need alcohol inside you to bear it. What’s more, even one sober guest leaves a chill in the air. How are the rest of us to expand and float away with this cold draft to deflate us? It’s pure selfishness not to drink, and to Bill’s credit, he understood this and began, slowly at first, then faster, to imbibe.
There were only five or six of us still there when Leda slammed her glass down on the table. “This is getting dull. I know.” She looked speculatively at the boys on either side of her. “We’ll play the truth game.”
“OK,” said Peanut, laughing.
I watched for Bill’s reaction. He was slightly blurred by drink; he gave Leda a look and smiled. “Haven’t played that since I was fourteen.”
“About time, then,” Leda replied briskly.
We cleared a space for the bottle, and there was a moment of silence. Leda was enjoying herself. The bottle spun in the half dark, skittered across the table, and came to rest pointing at Leda herself.
“All right, Leda, you start. What’s the worst crime you’ve committed?” said Bill.
“Worst crime? Jesus? I dunno. Not sending my grandmother a birthday card. Buying smack for my ex. Which is worse?”
The bottle spun again.
“Peanut,” Leda drawled. “We’ll start easy. What’s your greatest desire?”
“To tell the truth.” He laughed.
Spin.
“Bill,” asked Peanut. “When was the best sex you ever had?”
“Er… dunno.”
“Come on!” she snapped.
“Well, all right—last night, with you, Leda,” Bill said, smirking.
“For God’s sake! You’re all liars, the lot of you.” She jumped up in a fury.
Later that night, when I stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of water, I glimpsed Bill and Leda at the end of the corridor. They were standing in each other’s arms; their expressions were grave. She was speaking: by her tone, telling him something important. When I came back, I realized she was teaching him to waltz. Leda’s head was inclined, revealing her long pale neck; sternly, she was intoning, “One, two, three. One, two, three—now turn!—two, three.” Every line of Bill’s body expressed submission. If he had any secrets, he surely wasn’t going to keep them for much longer.