What Garfield was doing was listening to Vassili's stammering attempts to deal with the pitfalls of the English language. As Smin caught a few words of what his son was saying, he frowned. "Excuse me," he said to the teacher; and then, to his son, "Vassili? I do not know English, but I recognize such words as neutron and uranium. What are you telling our American friends?"
The boy flushed. "I was only explaining to them what you do, Father."
"Yes, that I am involved in the management of a nuclear power plant, of course. But what else are you saying?"
"Oh, our cousin Garfield did not understand how it was possible to control a nuclear reaction, so I explained to him what you taught me; that although most neutrons are released at once, there are a very few that take a fraction of a second longer, and it is because of them that there is time to adjust the speed of the reaction. Just as you have told me, Father. Did I get it right?"
"Perhaps too right," Smin said dryly. "I don't think Gorodot Khrenov would like you to be explaining nuclear matters to Americans. Go help your.grandmother, please; she is getting ready to feed us."
So Vassili was drafted to put two tables together and find chairs to go around them, and young Mrs. Didchuk to help the formidable old lady put food on the table. In a few minutes they were all seated, one way or another, still talking.
Smin wondered what was going through the Americans' minds. The woman was, after all, very beautiful. She seemed exactly like one of those Western movie stars with their remarkable teeth and the figures of young girls — well, that seemed to be exactly what she was, to be sure. A movie star. From Hollywood. Who no doubt lived in one of those sprawling eight-room or nine-room mansions that clung to mountainsides and looked out over oceans — with, no doubt, a swimming pool in the immense backyard and two or three huge American cars in the garage. What could she be making of his mother's flat with its paper-thin carpet worn bare, its battered furniture, its walls with the paint chipping off in the corners?
He realized, with resignation, that before long there would be more said on this subject. From his wife. Who had been after him all along about his mother's "Khrushchev" flat, thrown up at great speed thirty years ago and decaying rapidly ever since, without even a telephone. "You must realize, Simyon," she would say patiently — again! — "that you hold a very important position. You should live accordingly. Not Brezhnev style, of course; no one does that anymore. But with dignity, even in your mother's apartment, since we often use it." And it would be no good telling her — again! — that the way his mother lived was his mother's own choice, because she would simply point out that old people did not always know what was best for them, after all.
Smin debated whether it was worthwhile to try to forestall some of his wife's remarks by explaining to the Americans just what kind of a woman his mother was. It seemed a daunting job, especially with old Aftasia sitting there and listening to every word. In any case, the conversation was going along very well without that. Garfield, through Mrs. Didchuk, was explaining to the whole group just why he and his wife had decided it was better to live in Beverly Hills than Brentwood, although, of course, Beverly Hills was much more expensive.
In the middle of it, Garfield broke off to stare more closely at what Aftasia Smin had set on the table. Then he grinned and spoke rapidly to his wife, who laughed and replied. Both were obviously discussing the food.
"What are they saying?" Smin asked the male teacher.
Didchuk seemed embarrassed. "It's funny, but Mrs. Garfield said" — he hesitated—"well, she mentioned that she was surprised there were no dishes of cabbage on the table."
Smin laughed. "Tell her, please, that cabbage does not agree with my mother. Was that all?"
"Oh, no." The teacher paused, obviously searching for the tactful words. "Mr. Garfield was saying to his wife what these foods are. He says that those are bitter herbs, and those biscuits are what he calls 'matzos,' and this is a real, pardon me, I don't know the word, it is something like 'cross over'?"
"Oh, my mother is at it again," Smin sighed. "This is the time of a Jewish holiday — what, the second night of Passover? Please tell him that we are not religious, but my mother—"
"Tell him nothing of the sort!" his mother called, setting down a great tureen of soup. "Even if our cousin from America doesn't know Hebrew, he's a Jew. I asked him!"
But it turned out, after a good deal of talk back and forth, that although Dean Garfield really enjoyed the Passover ritual, he said he was not much more of a practicing Jew than Smin himself, in fact was something called a "Unitarian," because his wife had been something called "Methodist" and they had wanted a "Sunday school" to send their children to; and then Smin's mother wanted to hear all about the children.
The chicken broth was excellent — Smin's mother boasted she had stood in line an hour to get the chicken. Then the food began — mushrooms baked in sour cream in individual pots, the meat of the stewed chicken that had made the soup, meat pies, sturgeon in jelly; when all that was done, there was fruit compote and small cakes with poppy-seed filling. The teachers were too timid to eat much at first, but then there was also Georgian wine and Armenian brandy, and at the end icy cold vodka.
By the time of the brandy, and long before the vodka, the teachers were stuffing themselves, and the Americans, though they ate very little, praised everything immensely and drank enough to make up. They even praised Smin's mother's two table spreads, overlapped to cover the round table that was pressed against the long one to make room for eight persons, and did not comment on the curious selection of kitchen chairs, armchairs, and other sittables that surrounded the tables. They obviously enjoyed impressing these relatives, and others, with their prosperity and the high ratings of Garfield's television show, but actually Dean Garfield was impressed with his second cousin too. "Director of a nuclear power plant!" he said through the female teacher. "That's a mighty important job."
"It is the most important job in the Ukraine," Smin's mother said severely, and Smin demurred.
"There are a lot of people who would be surprised to hear that," he told her, and then, for the Americans, told them what Chernobyl was like. Four billion watts of electrical energy derived from the smokeless, pollutionless power of fissioning uranium dioxide; enough to supply an entire city or run a whole countryside of factories.
It turned out that the American cousin had some views on nuclear power. He spoke of San Onofro and Three Mile Island, of earthquake faults and the China syndrome, of children's birth defects and future leukemias. The teachers gamely translated, though they had to consult each other frequently for some of the terms. "Yes," put in Vassili eagerly, almost falling off his seat — as the youngest, he had been given the hassock with pillows piled on top of it, "but our reactors are different. There was a report in a scientific journal years ago — I read it in school — which said that in the Soviet Union the problem of nuclear safety has been solved!"
"No, no," said Smin gently, "not solved. It is never solved. It is true that we know the solutions and embody them in our daily practice, but the solution has to be applied again every day, every minute. Forgive me — I don't want to say anything against American practices—" He waited politely for translation.