purity.
Religion, she thought, might be the answer for someone capable of giving a whole heart and all fibers of the soul. Love was such a boorish substitute. The trouble was that all women’s monasteries were probably closed now, because of the opium of the people they used to dispense. Still, she said, T could use some opium myself right now, or morphine.’
When we emerged onto Petrovka again, she considered a visit to the building directly across the street, a bizarre eighteenth-century mansion now identified by a red sign as "The Institute of Physiotherapy’. T spared you most of the details, dear Zhoseph, and shall continue to spare you. The Lieutenant’s coarseness should not be inflicted on any innocent third party. Still, you should know the general fact of my suffering.’
Her last comment was spoken quite happily. On the other hand, it was rather fascinating. A valuable life experience , you might say. The thing is, I cant quite make up my mind whether it was ennobling or degrading to have been desperately in love with a bastard.
16
I no longer try to analyze my attitude towards this country. There are too many layers and too many moods. The more "Russianness’ I see, the less I’m able to separate its virtues and deep flaws.
A tourist has a better chance of making up his mind. He may, for example, belong to the category that has a deep-
rooted craving to be thrilled by the Soviet people and prove to himself that socialism works. In this case, he’ll recognize an expression of universal humanity in a waiter shoving a menu at him after an hours wait. When taken on tour of dreary housing developments, he will marvel at Soviet achievements. When his Intourist guide (bored silly and long past embarrassment over the half-truths she recites) preaches about the productivity of socialist labor and purity of socialist-realist art, he 11 be moved by her shining wisdom. Above all, he’ll confirm what he’s always known: that Americans and Russians have a profound natural affinity. He may meet a Russian - the kind allowed to consort with tourists — and make the discovery that both peoples
share the habit of brushing teeth. With toothpaste! From a tube! r
On the other hand, he may belong to the category that despises the country ac first sight. Even in his Intourist accommodation — beyond ordinary Russians’ dreams of luxury — he will be irritated by the hopeless inefficiency: daily breakdowns of elevators, plumbing and nerves. He may not know he’s paying thirty-five times what a Russian does for the same room, but he’ll sense Intourist’s ruthless fleecing. When he ventures from his hotel, he’ll be depressed by universal shoddiness and shabbiness: the absence of smiles; unholy contrast between the paradise of propaganda and dreariness of everything else. By the third day, he’ll yearn to board a plane — any line but Aeroflot — and resume a real vacation in Rome.
If this categorization sounds snide, the trouble is that my own reactions bounce as fitfully from pole to pole. Neither Intourist’s transparent fictions nor the gloominess of the streets are a guide to anything important, but aren’t the country’s inner qualities equally contradictory? An extraordinary warmth and sensitivity survives under the surface Soviet rule. A heightening of perceptions and flooding of senses - the same qualities that have made Russian literature the most moving and universal in the world. Yet the
country is obscurantist, backward and exhausting. It is a cruel dictatorship in the grip of evil men: Southern-sheriff types who trample on civilized standards without even understanding their crimes. And their marks are everywhere, in slovenliness, darkness and weight. Libraries are written explaining Russian in terms of one or another theory: Marxism-Leninism; the artistic temperament; the mysteries of the Russian soul. But these abstractions manage to ignore the starkest fact: the country is dismally poor.
Why, then, am I drawn to it? Because I feel richer by comparison? Because I’m lionized for a pack of Camels or an old Beatles’ record? Because it’s easier to live where the problems are external - society’s fault rather than your own?
But these obviously aren’t the sole explanations, for it was also in a poor and backward country that I began to miss Moscow in gentle swells. The first weeks of my vacation had been blissful. As my plane crossed the Soviet border, an inexorable weight disappeared; back on the ground, I took pleasure in the luxury of shop windows and ordered drinks for the sake of holding a graceful glass and watching civilized service. The sun and sea were glorious, the
food spectacular by Russian standards. But something was missing.
I lay on the beach at Taormina, on Sicily’s eastern coast, and relived my last day in Moscow. It was frantic because, as on every trip ‘outside’, I didn’t know whether I’d be allowed back in. I’d been issued a double visa, for re-entry as well as exit; but the former is sometimes annulled when an ‘unfriendly’ correspondent is abroad and the authorities want to be rid of him. Leaving Moscow, therefore, is as different from leaving other places as living there is: you risk never seeing your friends again.
This thought makes you feel dramatic, but also frightened. The goodbyes have an altogether special meaning because they may be the last ones. You and your friends look into each other’s eyes and promise to remember, even if work, 156
politics or someone’s revenge happen to separate you. You thank each other for being friends and bringing some mean-ing into each other’s lives. Wars, famines, purges and midnight disappearances have familiarized Russians with this kind of parting; they perform it honestly and well. I haven’t yet learned to have grace, as Hemingway put it, under the pressure of this searing nostalgia and pathos.
Kostya gave a luxurious farewell supper the evening before my flight. It was attended by his new girl friend, an enchantingly pretty medical resident called Tamara. She’d been living with him for over a week, which indicated he was extremely fond of her and she would become a member of his permanent 'brood’ after the cooling of the romance. Having teased him about public health violations, she’d done the impossible in cleaning his Augean room, and Kostya gave her an ounce of Chanel, a magnificent gift, in appreciation. She used it that evening, even though perfume made her shy; and sprinkled a liberal volume on Oktyabrina’s lavender frock.
The summer plans were fixed. Kostya and Oktyabrina would be leaving for the Black Sea three days later. Kostya’s trip with the geology girls had fallen through, but a former lassie of his was the mistress of a secretary in the Union of Composers, and had arranged for him to have a cabin in one of the so-called 'Creative Retreats’ directly on the sea. The retreats exist under the fiction of providing creative artists a sequestered place to work, but in fact are a supplementary reward for the 'working intelligentsia’ who produce politically acceptable art, and are usually used for inexpensive and rather uninhibited vacations in luxury unavailable to the general public.
‘People can’t spell any more,’ said Kostya. ‘All these new ComPart abbreviations are turning the great Russian language into a science-fiction code. It’s procreative retreat - not “creative”. And nobody in the whole Union gets it right.’
He made sure to explain how composers use the colony
to duck their wives. ‘There hasn’t been a chord written there since Stalin ordered a requiem to himself in 1953 and shot a few “saboteurs” for composing below Mozart’s standards. At noon, every composer gets up and suns away his hangover. At sundown, they open their bottles and examine the girls they’ve selected on the public beach. Last year there was a proposal to chop up the piano for campfires, but the keyboards come in handy for hanging panties where they’ll be found in the morning.
Oktyabrina was going to travel with Kostya as far as Sochi - the largest resort on the coast, a kind of 1930s Miami Beach - from which she would survey the scene. It was her first trip to the Black Sea and she was full of the inevitable chatter about palm trees, luxury and romance. Nevertheless, she occasionally remembered to be blase about the trip. T simply cant remain in Moscow,’ she would say with heavy exasperation. ‘Everybody who’s anybody is leaving for the season. I’ve stopped fighting these boring conventions . . . and besides, someone must look after poor Kostya.