That radiant day was still in the future, however, and meanwhile, the communists at the Comintern hostel lived at the expense of the Soviet authorities, spending their time arguing heatedly about politics and signing all sorts of resolutions.
At the entrance to the hostel, a receptionist asked for Magda’s documents and entered her name in a ledger.
“First floor on your right,” he told her, but Magda headed straight off to see Friedrich in room 66.
She walked down a damp, dimly lit corridor and stopped in front of the precious door. Some jokers had added another “6” to the number plate and scrawled on it, “Gates of Hell—Please knock.”
Quietly, Magda tapped on the door with her fingernails. Nobody answered, so she pushed open one of the double doors, which was slightly ajar.
“How much do you want?” she heard Friedrich’s voice coming from the bedroom.
Barely aware of what she was doing, Magda crept into the hall and then in the bathroom. She stood with her back to the water heater, her heart thumping, listening to what was going on in the bedroom.
“Let me tell you, you won’t find better cocaine in Moscow,” Friedrich said persuasively.
“But why is it so expensive?” asked a voice with a French accent.
“Well, if you don’t like the price, you can go and buy hashish from the Uzbeks at the market.”
Magda’s head was spinning. The man she loved was a drug dealer!
Soon after, the Frenchman left, and Friedrich came into the bathroom. He was so startled to see Magda that he cried out in alarm.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped.
“I… I wanted to buy some cocaine,” she blurted out, unable to think of anything better to say. “I heard you were selling it.”
Magda began to make regular visits to room 666. It was madness to spend the last of her money on cocaine she neither wanted nor needed, but it was the only way she could meet Friedrich alone.
They would speak only briefly, and their conversations always began with Friedrich criticizing Magda for her “drug habit.”
“I don’t feel sorry for the others,” he said. “They can poison themselves for all I care. But you saved me from the Chinese police. Do you know what’s going to happen to you? First of all, you’ll have hallucinations and fits of despondency; then, after a couple of months, you won’t be able to think of anything except your next meeting with me.”
Magda looked into his eyes. “You’re quite right, you know.”
But despite all his warnings, Friedrich provided her with liberal supplies of cocaine, issuing strict warnings not to buy it from street kids.
“The stuff they sell is contraband from Livonia—cut with chalk or soda.”
She would go back to her hotel room and flush her purchase down the toilet.
One day, Magda asked Friedrich why he had started to deal in drugs. His reply amazed her. He told her that his superiors had given him a choice: either he would start transporting cocaine into the country or somebody else would be given the job of flying to Berlin, and Friedrich would join his friends the Trotskyites in exile or in prison.
Like vintage wines and brandy, expensive drugs came into the USSR mainly from Hamburg, Berlin, and Riga. The top quality stuff was brought in not by smugglers, who tended to manufacture their own substandard product, but by ships’ captains, train guards, diplomatic couriers, and pilots. These groups could get through customs without having their baggage inspected, and their product would be sold straight to eminent Party dignitaries and “useful foreigners.”
“Do you think I’m ashamed of what I do?” Friedrich asked Magda. “Not in the least! Half the people in the Kremlin either swill vodka or sniff cocaine. Those scoundrels have killed the revolution, and I’ve no sympathy for them. What I can’t understand is why you’ve become a drug addict.”
Magda assumed a tragic expression. “What else do I have to live for?”
Then she told him all about how Klim Rogov had taken the job she had set her heart on. In spite of all her efforts to find work, no Soviet editor had expressed an interest in hiring her, and she now had no visa and no money.
“Do you know how to do anything?” demanded Friedrich angrily.
Magda put her hand to her heart. “I can write books, and I’m a good photographer.”
The next time Magda came to Friedrich, he gave her a letter from an editor in Berlin. This editor explained that Germany was very interested in what was going on in the USSR because many German firms were hoping to supply goods to the country. They had nowhere else to turn since the victorious allies had placed heavy restrictions on German foreign trade after the Great War. If Miss Thomson were willing to write a book about her life in Moscow, the publisher would take on the expense of having the book translated, even paying her an advance. All the editor asked was for her to send him a plan and a couple of sample chapters.
“It’s one of my… well, my customers,” muttered Friedrich. “You need to grab your chance with him while he can still think straight. Pretty soon, his family will have him committed to a clinic, and he won’t be any use to you.”
Magda was so moved that tears came into her eyes. “Of course I’ll write to him! Let me have the address.”
Friedrich told her that all correspondence should be directed through him. That way, it would be possible to get around the censors.
“I’m happy to help you,” he said, “but on one condition. You must give up cocaine. And believe me; you won’t be able to fool me. If you carry on taking it, I’ll be able to sniff it out.”
Magda swore in the name of all that was sacred that she would never again touch the dreaded white powder. She was overjoyed at the prospect of her new job.
Magda’s plan was approved in Berlin, the contract was signed, and work began on the new book.
The Bolsheviks were very keen to attract tourists into the country, and Friedrich advised Magda to inform the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs that she was planning to write a travel guide for foreigners. Her visa was extended straight away, and she was allowed to rent the apartment of an opera singer who had left the country on a tour.
What a shame it was, thought Magda, that Nina was no longer with her! The interpreters sent to her by the state did their best to take her to places she did not care about, such as the Bolshoi Theater or the furniture museum. In the end, Magda decided she would go everywhere alone and explain herself to Russians using sign language if she had to.
For a chapter of her book devoted to Soviet children, she had to write about the street urchins, homeless waifs who had appeared in vast numbers as a result of the civil war, the recent famine, and widespread alcoholism among the working class.
They had their own turfs and professions. One might steal coal from the railroad yards while another specialized in pickpocketing, and still others ran errands for construction teams. Magda was keen to build up a picture of how these children lived, so she set off for the market to acquaint herself with the future characters of her book.
A huge street market had sprung up beneath the half-ruined wall of Kitai Gorod. Lookouts sat in the embrasures in the ancient towers, ready to give the signal if a police patrol arrived. Beneath them jostled crowds of unlicensed traders peddling all manner of goods—from counterfeit perfume to dried fish and from coarse cloth brassieres to rat poison. Many of them were selling identical goods, produced out in manufacturing workshops in the suburbs of Moscow.
An enormous peasant moved through the crowd festooned in toy pistols and swords. Every once in a while, he would shoot a cap into the air with a deafening bang.