“It can’t be all that bad and she has a wonderful itinerary for you tomorrow. The Tolstoi Museum, a farmers’ market or two where you can get me some cracked walnuts and real Russian honey and anything that looks unusual there as gifts and will travel well for home. And the Andronikov monastery”—“Great, more icons”—“Don’t go if you don’t want, but also for its ancient tiny church and onion domes. And the G.U.M. department store to buy records for a quarter and a znachki shop there with the largest selection of them in the city. To impress her, pronounce the store ‘Goom.’” “Goom, Goom.” “Then step in with her someplace, get a taste of a workers’ restaurant or café—she knows it all, and maybe over food alone you’ll get to know and appreciate each other better. Anyway, she’ll show you the ropes, how to use the trolley and pay phone and to shop without being cheated and show your dollars without getting mugged. By the time she’s through with you, you’ll be exhausted but have a map of the city in your head. Then you have a day off and she from you. It’s for me too you’ll be doing this. I’ll be too busy to go shopping even one afternoon. And though I’ve seen most of it before you can tell me what you saw and also take pictures to show me and the kids later on.”
Svetlana shows up on the dot next morning. We see things by foot, trolley, metro, occasional cab for a five-dollar bill Marguerite was told to bring about twenty of to Moscow for just something like this. Svetlana says once “Am I talking too much?” She is but I say “Nope.” “I’ve tendencies towards talk, possibly for being sequestered in my slight space the rest of the days and the one woman I see most to take care of doesn’t say three words a time. But I’m an honest person, you’re visiting a culture where honest persons with words is almost a belief, so you want to be an honest person too, don’t you? Tell me to my face if I’m twisting your ears as the English like to say, and perhaps the Americans too, or showing you too many things too fast to digest.” “No no, I mean it, everything couldn’t be better, thanks.”
I don’t want to be with her for lunch so I say I think I’m still suffering from jet lag and would like a nap at my hotel, would she mind eating alone? I give her money for the first-floor café, go upstairs and lie on my bed and drink coffee and read, she rings from the lobby an hour later. More places and constant information and chatter. “Are you sure I’m not talking too much?” “Why, do you think you are?” “Well, I might be.” “No, absolutely not, it’s all fine.” Every monument and theater and famous person’s birth or living place and also every building we pass by foot, trolley and cab that looks interesting architecturally or stands out because of its size she has something to say about. “That so? Yes, hmm, so this is where it is, I didn’t know that.”
We meet Marguerite for dinner at a Georgian restaurant she had to make reservations for two days ago, and in the cab back to our hotel we drop Svetlana off at a metro station. She hands us each several candies. “Special, hard to get because individually wrapped and the ingredients very select. They’re made by an acquaintance of mine in the Kremlin’s confectionary kitchen and often given in droves to dignitaries and diplomats. We ought to export them simply for their colorful wrappers. Bears and squirrels — children would love them.” “That’s very kind, thank you,” I say. “I don’t eat candy myself but will definitely try one, though not now because I’m too full, and save the rest for my girls.” Marguerite’s told her tomorrow will be a paid day off and asks if she’d like the first three days’ pay now. “All at once, please. I wouldn’t want to ride the metro with it. Too much in dollars and one of our now many clever Moscow thieves might see it on my face.” “And on the fifth day?” I say. “Will he see it on my face you mean? No, since that day I’ll hire a taxicab or continue with yours, flush like an American tourist or spending as freely as one. But because I’m Russian, all for the sum or extra one of a dollar, and then hide the money in my room for one of your rainy days. That is yours?” “Ours and probably the English’s too.”
Later I say to Marguerite “Know why she wants all her wages at once?” “Something disparaging, I suppose.” “No, just conjecture born out of insight or something. Because she thinks we’ll have to give her a bigger tip for the whole fifty than if we only gave her her last day’s pay on Friday. She’s a shrewdie all right, and even shrewder how well she disguises it.” “Disguises what?” “Everything. Or just things — some. Holding back — being extra gracious to me when we’re alone when I know damn well what she thinks of me intellectually, or maybe just culturally — we’ve spoken of it. And this not wanting her pay day by day because of the increment, the incremental — because with more…well, you know — or maybe I’m being far-fetched on this. But other things.” “That’s what I’m asking, what? Did she ever do or say anything in particular to make you question her motives this way?” “As I said, just little things I’ve picked up but nothing right now, other than what I’ve mentioned, that comes to mind.” “Well I think you’re way way off about her. She’s a touch sad but decent, and energetic and enthusiastic. And I only wish I had the time to be taken around by such a knowledgeable person who knows the city so well, even if she is so garrulous, and you were the one doing the bookwork all day. Actually, I think you’d like that more.” “No, I’m enjoying my rest away from work. And true, I suppose I should feel lucky having her for so little money. But the greater truth is I feel luckier being on my own tomorrow. Anyway, not to change the subject, I was thinking just now: ‘da, da‘—what a nice soft way to say yes.”
But to move along. She doesn’t call Wednesday morning as she said she would to find out what time she should come Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her and she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t call Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her every fifteen minutes, thinking maybe she was out all night, slept at a friend’s — has a secret life she never gave us a clue about, she says — or got in after midnight last night, when Marguerite stopped calling, and didn’t call us after that because she felt it was too late, and was up and out for groceries or something early this morning. We leave the phone off the hook — each room has its own number, so it’s all direct — when we go to the hotel restaurant for our complimentary breakfast. Marguerite calls when we get back, then asks me to stick around an hour more before going out on my own if that’s what I plan to do. “When she was outside she might have had trouble getting a pay phone or misplaced our number or didn’t have the two kopecks on her and nobody could give her change — anything, and she just got hold of a phone. If you want, which you probably won’t, call every fifteen minutes or so — she might have just got home. But I’m a little worried about her, aren’t you?” and I say “Of course, it doesn’t seem like her, but I’m sure it’s nothing,” and she leaves for her appointment. I wait but don’t call, figuring if she just got home first thing she’d do would be to call. I leave after an hour, walk around the old section of the city, try to find some buildings in War and Peace Marguerite said are still supposed to be here — the Rostovs’ mansion, Pierre’s house — but can’t find the streets, even though they’re on my map, and no one, if they’re hearing me right and understanding the few Russian words Marguerite taught me yesterday to make myself understood in something like this, seems to have heard of them; stop in a café for “odin kofe, mineralenaya voda and dva bulka”—woman shakes her head—“bulki, bulka, two,” holding up two fingers and then pointing to some rolls on the counter behind her, “mais—but not sweet ones, nyet sakhar, pzhalesta,” and she gives me mineral water and coffee without the lump of sugar that usually comes with it and takes enough change out of my palm to pay for it while I’m trying to find in it what amount I think she said.