A stack of cables awaited me in the office. They were full of queries that only members of the Politburo and General Staff could answer about details of the invasion’s preparation, of where Dubcek and the others had been held hostage, of their reactions during the sessions with their kidnappers. In the heat of an important story, stateside editors forget - because they’ve never fully understood — that the hard news they want simply doesn’t exist. The Pentagon reveals more about the battle plans of Polaris submarines than the Kremlin about its workings. My stories were lumps 162
of dough after Vienna’s ringing cries. The most f could hope was that a straight report of the screaming lies of the Russian press would demonstrate how far the Soviet government, in manufacturing its own logic and standards, departed from Western notions of truth and justice.
In the absence of hard news, Chicago asked for local color and man-in-the-street reactions. But the strangest aspect of the invasion - the aspect my editors could least understand, suspecting laziness on my part - was that the Moscow man on the street had no reaction at all to what their tanks were doing, except a mild 'serves the Czech wise-guys right’. When it became clear that the invasion would not involve Russia in a new war, few Russians gave it another thought. It was something taking place in the mythical, inaccessible 'outside’, about which Russians have no reliable knowledge and in which no real say - and therefore little interest. The whole world was holding its breath or trembling with indignation over Czechoslovakia and its consequences, but in Russia the problems were to find a dry-cleaner for your overcoat and elbow your way into department stores and busses. A few stunted apples and pears had appeared on the counters of selected grocery shops. Now was the time to grab them, five or six kilos at a time, or forget the taste of fresh fruit for another year.
Kostya obtained his fruit, including whole armfuls of fine Bulgarian grapes, without waiting in line: the supervisor of a nearby peasant market had been his girlfriend twenty years ago, when he was a young steel rigger in Magnitogorsk.
‘Czechoslovakia?’ he said with sham fervor when I tuned to a news report. ‘I’m delighted you’re taking an interest in the way we free citizens run our affairs. The entire Soviet people, all progressive mankind, is profoundly grateful to the Party for offering fraternal help to the happy comrades in Prague.’
He poured two tumblers of white Crimean wine, which he was serving with fresh zander bought in another market,
and fitted a new tape onto the recorder, a decrepit replacement for his Philips.
'But what the hell’s all the fuss about, I wonder?’ he continued. 'X myself remember the Czechs inviting our comradely army into the country, pleading with us to help save them from fascism.’
At this signal, I took out my notebook and pretended to jot down his Pravda -like quotes for publication throughout the world.
'Let’s see. . . . The Czechs extended the invitation in the summer of ’38 - just before Munich, I think. Naturally we thought it over carefully before sending our tanks in -- thirty years and two months later. Our Leninist Party spilleth over with humanitarianism; it never likes to rush for its guns.’
Kostya was tanned to a deep terra umbra, which lifted ten years from his appearance. He was now in splendid physical shape, having swum miles every day along the coast just outside Sochi. One day he struck out directly to sea to test how far he’d get before being stopped - frontier guards in the guise of life-savers patrol the whole of Russia’s Black Sea coast to prevent defections by water. A motor boat intercepted him about two miles from shore, and that very afternoon his papers were examined by a Sochi KGB agent posing as an ordinary policeman. For the fun of it, Kostya produced several bottles and drank the agent, who’d boasted of his capacity, under the table.
Otherwise, his vacation had been only a moderate success. Much as he loved the sun, Sochi was losing some of its luster after sixteen consecutive summers. He could hardly make a new conquest there; most of the beauties he spied on the beach turned out to be part of last year’s catch, or the year before’s. So many familiar physiques. . . .
As for Oktyabrina, he’d quickly lost contact with her. She went to sleep the first night with the intention of spending several weeks in exploration alone. But she soon found she wasn’t 'transported’ by Sochi and gave notice that she was moving on. The beach displeased her most: 164
she hadnt expected crowds of people ‘practically rubbing stomachs with each other — obese hairy stomachs\ And she disapproved on principle of deep tanning, or ‘the charring of flesh . Although it’s true that Sochi’s beaches are packed to bursting with some of the largest and least attractive bodies on earth, Kostya sensed that Oktyabrina’s aesthetic disappointment masked her own embarrassment to appear in a bathing suit. She wore long skirts and high-necked blouses in the sun, then fashioned a parasol out of an old umbrella frame and some emerald fabric, and pinked a pair of white work gloves into ‘lace’.
‘I caught her sniffing the sea like a baby seagull,’ said Kostya. ‘This was a few kilometers up the coast, on an empty beach.’
‘I wonder where she is now.’
‘I wonder where I’m going to get a new bathing suit. This ones shot. Plus about a thousand rubles I borrowed down there. The Japanese suit was indeed very worn; and Kostya refused to wash it because of the magic smell of salt. He slipped a pack of Camels into the limp elastic.
‘The theater season’s already started,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we go just once this year?’
Kostya wrapped his arm around my shoulder. ‘Relax: she’ll turn up any day now. It rains down there in the fall. Pre-ci-pi-ta-tion. Why the hell do you think anybody comes back?’
‘She didn’t say where she was going?’
‘Of course she did - she announced it. Departure for the Yalta because it was “certain to be more refined”. The Tsar’s summer palace, etcetera. Actually, I once knew a man who had quite an adventure with the daughter of the Tsar’s former cook. No - the daughter of the former Tsar’s cook. Anyway this happened back in ’32 when ’
‘Did she have any money? She doesn’t know anyone in Yalta.’
‘Zhoe buddy, you don’t understand how it works down south. It’s warm. So-lar energy. Puts everybody in a generic
ous mood. Stop worrying: even skinny girls do fine/
"I suppose so. .. /
‘You need another vodka - helps when you're short on emotional self-discipline/
‘Or on bullshit/
‘A few weeks away from Mother Russia in those Sicilies and Viennas and you come back oozing pessimism again. It's hellish, what imperialism does to a good man/
We filled our glasses again and listened gloomily to an extremely worn Ray Charles tape. Kostya balanced the empty bottle on his pyramid of empties. Every few months he hired a taxi, returned the heap to a neighborhood store and had a big ‘rejuvenation' celebration on the sum of the deposits. But now the prospect of a party seemed hollow.
Lets head down to Kalinin Prospekt!’ he exclaimed with attempted enthusiasm. ‘They say a juke box's been installed in a new cafe. A juke box is the latest Russian invention — know what it is?’
We did drive to Kalinin Prospekt, a recently reconstructed boulevard flanked by East German-type skyscrapers, and there was indeed an Italian juke box in one of the cafes -but also a tight knot of disappointed teenagers studying the tantalizing object through the window. The cafe, a crude imitation of a pre-war Howard Johnson's, had opened during the summer with considerable ballyhoo, and was already closed for general repairs.