Oktyabrina handed me an apple and settled in the armchair to attack hers. It was a Friday morning; she had recently arrived and I was finishing an article on arms limitation. The radio was introducing a drama based on Lenin’s skill in reading and taking notes. The minor domestic traumas of the past weeks were forgotten; our understanding of each other was steadily waxing, like the spring 112
sun. It was indeed our happy period - and also the calm before the storm. It broke twenty-four hours later.
Oktyabrina had never taken the slightest interest in my work until that Saturday - when it spoiled our plans. We'd meant to spend a happy afternoon at a French industrial exhibition in Sokolniki Park, one or two or three major Western exhibits a year, all of which are inevitably packed. Rows of giant machinery would seem to interest only engineers, but there are usually enough photographs of the magical sponsoring country to fascinate the general Moscow public. Displays of fashions and consumer goods are also bewitching, not to speak of in-the-flesh trouser-suited guides. Even Embassy wives, having forgotten these visual delights, spend days at the fairs.
Oktyabrina and I planned to consummate our tour with supper at a restaurant just outside the fair grounds. The ordinarily dismal establishment had been temporarily taken over by Maxim's as the exhibition's most alluring ‘side show’. Oktyabrina prepared for it during most of the morning; her outfit was going to be a surprise.
Just before we planned to leave, the Press Department telephoned. I was informed that an interview I'd requested exactly seventeen weeks before had been granted, and could be conducted that afternoon - and that afternoon only. The man I was to see was the Vice-Minister of Public Health, the author of a long article in Komsomolskaya Pravda , the newspaper of the Young Communist League. It was an indignant attack on Siberia's spoilage by ruthlessly expanding Soviet industry. If the man was anything like his prose, an interview with him would be quite a prize.
Oktyabrina's disappointment over the interview's scheduling was mild compared to mine over its substance. I drove to the Ministry of Public Health with real hope; this was a non-political story, after all, and once in a blue moon a Soviet official says something meaningful. My illusions dissolved the moment we sat down to talk.
It was in the ubiquitous reception room of every public institution, with the bottles of mineral water arrayed on the green felt 'conference’ table. The mere sight of this setting, Soviet officialdom’s obligatory 'parlor’, tends to stifle any free flow of ideas. But the more direct cause of rigidity and futility was the two attendant supernumeraries. The Vice-Minister met me with an 'interpreter’ - whose real function was instantly clear to all three of us, since not a word of English was used during the entire hour. The man sat silently at the Vice-Minister’s right, wiping his glasses fastidiously, and unconcerned by the transparency of his disguise.
On my right was stationed a small jovial reporter from the Novosti Press Agency who, throughout the proceedings, beamed at me as if to indicate pleasure that the international fraternity of journalists had been reconvened, and occasionally jotted a note onto the margin of his newspaper. His presence was explained - by the interpreter - in terms of a 'remarkable but highly gratifying’ coincidence: Novosti too happened to be investigating ‘control of industrial waste’.
This might have been true, for Novosti does like to steal stories suggested by Western reporters - and then, having denied permission to these Western reporters, to hawk the articles (for hard currency) in Western capitals. However, Novosti’s function that afternoon was not to poach my idea, but to send a back-up man for .the 'interpreter’. This was clear from what I overheard when hurrying back into the building to retrieve the Vice-Minister’s card, which he’d presented me ceremoniously when he at last appeared, and I’d inadvertently left on the table. The Novosti man was in the foyer, complaining to the interpreter: ‘Tell me next time, will you, for God’s sake? At least the subject! Pollution , of all things. I could’ve prepared some statistics or something, instead of playing the friendly dummy the whole time.’
As it happened, statistics were the sole offering of the Vice-Minister himself. In crushing abundance: the percent-114
age of improvement in air cleanliness, water cleanliness and pollution controls . ... In his droning assemblage of figures, he not only said nothing in elaboration of his article, but produced a mass of mumbo-jumbo to refute it.
Obviously, someone higher had ordered him to correct the ‘subversive’ impression his crusade had produced in the Western press. There was no serious pollution problem in Soviet society, he was saying; and under socialism, there could be none. He slipped into a chronicle of the Russian people’s miseries under Tsarism and the striking superiority of Soviet public health to that of American imperialists. ‘Pollution is wholly insignificant in comparison to our people’s immense strides under our Leninist Party’s unshakable leadership.
Not one paragraph of this ‘interview’ was usable, except perhaps in a backgrounder about the mechanics of interviewing in Russia — which would have infuriated the Press Department. However, there was nothing unusual about the Vice-Minister’s performance. The episode assumed importance only because of my ensuing discussion with Oktyabrina.
I’d dropped her at the exhibition grounds on my way to the Ministry. When I returned, only ten minutes late, she was waiting at the gate as we’d planned. Her fingers drummed against her handbag, to indicate that she was heroically controlling her exasperation.,
‘Don’t bother to hurry, Mister Busy,’ she called. ‘It’s too late for the restaurant. They said there was still an evening table if you’d reserved even an hour ago.’
‘It’s just as well really. I’m not in the mood for a grand
meal just now.’
‘Just as well? Thanks awfully. What about snails? What about crepes suzettes? Your seductive descriptions.’
‘We’ll come back during the week, I promise.’
‘How do you know I’ll be free during the week? You already promised. For today, Saturday, the eighteenth of May Old Style. Which is the fifth and my mother’s Saint’s
Day on the Gregorian Calendar, in case that fancy journalist s date-watch of yours has corroded/
The disappointment of the interview was still in my throat, spoiling the taste for banter. And for fighting the crowds to enjoy the exhibition. Since Oktyabrina had already seen much of what interested her, we set out towards the northern, unpeopled comer of the huge park. It had turned cold again, like a raw day in early March.
‘Whats the matter with you, Zhoe darling?’ Oktyabrina said at last.
‘Nothing.’
‘Something/
‘Nothing serious/
‘Something rather serious. One just doesn’t ask a lady to supper and ruin everything that way for no reason at all/ ‘Well?’ she said again in her half-teasing, half-daunting contralto.
‘Dearest Oktyabrina, believe me. There is a reason. It’s the reason for everything miserable here. This hypocritical government of yours. The medieval system .’
‘Zhoe darling, once upon a time you attempted to spank me for being “mysterious”. Now stop brooding and tell your confidante what’s gone wrong/
In the end, I did tell - and everything. I traced the history of my campaign to see the Vice-Minister, and the worthless result. Once the dam had broken, a catalogue of frustrations gushed out, including several I’d forgotten. I described the straight-jacket I was in, the refined or clumsy obstacles erected around every story, the impossibility of doing even a half-honest job. Finally, 1 returned to the Vice-Minister, and the stupidity, the cynical crudeness of his muzzling and my being handed the old propaganda line. . . .
In releasing the steam, I momentarily forgot Oktyabrina. When I glanced down for her reaction, I saw that she’d stopped a few paces back, where an elderly couple were walking their dog. She was fingering the little mongrel’s leash - an old bathrobe belt.