“Well, have to get back to work, ma’am,” said Artemis at his most rustic. “You go back to the house now and get some rest.” She turned and started for the house. He would have liked to console her—sorrow of any sort distressed him—but he knew that any gesture on his part would be hazardous. He reset the rig and went down another twenty feet, where he estimated the take to be about thirty gallons a minute. At three-thirty, Mrs. Filler left. She scowled at him as she drove past. As soon as she had gone, he moved hastily. He capped the well, got his rig onto the truck, and drove home. About nine that night, the phone rang. He thought of not answering or of asking his mother to take it, but his mother was watching television and he. had his responsibilities as a well driller. “You’ve got around thirty-five gallons a minute,” he said. “Haversham will install the pump. I don’t know whether or not you’ll need another storage tank. Ask Haversham. Goodbye.”
The next day, he took his shotgun and a package of sandwiches and walked the woods north of the town. He was not much of a wing shot and there weren’t many birds, but it pleased him to walk through the woods and pastures and climb the stone walls. When he got home, his mother said, “She was here. That lady. She brought you a present.” She passed him a box in which there were three silk shirts and a love letter. Later that evening, when the telephone rang, he asked his mother to say that he was out. It was, of course, Mrs. Filler. Artemis had not taken a vacation in several years and he could see that the time to travel had arrived. In the morning, he went to a travel agency in the village.
The agency was in a dark, narrow room on a dark street, its walls blazing with posters of beaches, cathedrals, and couples in love. The agent was a gray-haired woman. Above her desk was a sign that said: YOU HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO BE A TRAVEL AGENT. She seemed harassed and her voice was cracked with age, whiskey, or tobacco. She chain-smoked. She twice lighted cigarettes when there was a cigarette smoking in the ashtray. Artemis said that he had five hundred to spend and would like to be away for about two weeks. “Well, I suppose you’ve seen Paris, London, and Disneyland,” she said. “Everyone has. There’s Tokyo, of course, but they tell me it’s a very tiring flight. Seventeen hours in a 707, with a utility stop in Fairbanks. My most satisfied customers these days are the ones who go to Russia. There’s a package.” She flashed a folder at him. “For three hundred and twenty-eight dollars, you get economy round-trip air fare to Moscow, twelve days in a first-class hotel with all your meals, free tickets to hockey, ballet, opera, theatre, and a pass to the public swimming pool. Side trips to Leningrad and Kiev are optional.” He asked what else she might suggest. “Well, there’s Ireland,” she said, “but it’s rainy now. A plane hasn’t landed in London for nearly ten days. They stack up at Liverpool and then you take a train down. Rome is cold. So is Paris. It takes three days to get to Egypt. For a two-week trip the Pacific is out, but you could go to the Caribbean, although reservations are very hard to get. I suppose you’ll want to buy souvenirs and there isn’t much to buy in Russia.”
“I don’t want to buy anything,” Artemis said. “I just want to travel.”
“Take my advice,” she said, “and go to Russia.”
It seemed the maximum distance that he could place between himself and Mr. and Mrs. Filler. His mother was imperturbable. Most women who owned seven American flags would have protested, but she said nothing but “Go where you want, Sonny. You deserve a change.” His visa and passport took a week, and one pleasant evening he boarded the eight-o’clock Aeroflot from Kennedy to Moscow. Most of the other passengers were Japanese and couldn’t speak English and it was a long and a lonely trip.
It was raining in Moscow, so Artemis heard what he liked—the sound of rain. The Japanese spoke Russian and he trailed along behind them across the tarmac to the main building, where they formed a line. The line moved slowly and he had been waiting for an hour or longer when a good-looking young woman approached him and asked, “Are you Mr. Artemis Bucklin? I have very good news for you. Come with me.” She found his bag and bucked the lines for customs and immigration. A large black car was waiting for them. “We will go first to your hotel,” she said. She had a marked English accent. “Then we will go to the Bolshoi Theatre, where our great Premier, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, wants to welcome you as a member of the American proletariat. People of many occupations come to visit our beautiful country, but you are the first well driller.” Her voice was lilting and she seemed very happy with her news. Artemis was confused, tired, and dirty. Looking out of the car window, he saw an enormous portrait of the Premier nailed to a tree. He was frightened.
Why should he be frightened? He had dug wells for rich and powerful people and had met them without fear or shyness. Khrushchev was merely a peasant who, through cunning, vitality, and luck, had made himself the master of a population of over two hundred million. That was the rub; and as the car approached the city, portraits of Khrushchev looked in at Artemis from bakeries, department stores, and lampposts. Khrushchev banners flapped in the wind on a bridge across the Moskva River. In Mayakovsky Square, a large, lighted portrait of Khrushchev beamed down upon his children as they rushed for the subway entrance.
Artemis was taken to a hotel called the Ukraine. “We are already late,” the young woman said.
“I can’t go anywhere until I’ve taken a bath and shaved,” said Artemis. “I can’t go anywhere looking like this. And I would like something to eat.”
“You go up and change,” she said, “and I’ll meet you in the dining room. Do you like chicken?”
Artemis went up to his room and turned on the hot water in his tub. As anyone could guess, nothing happened. He shaved in cold water and was beginning to dress when the hot-water spout made a Vesuvian racket and began to ejaculate rusty and scalding water. He bathed in this, dressed, and went down. She was sitting at a table in the dining room, where his dinner had been served. She had kindly ordered a carafe of vodka, which he drank off before he ate his chicken. “I do not want to hasten you,” she said, “but we will be late. I will try to explain. Today is the jubilee of the Battle of Stavitsky. We will go to the Bolshoi Theatre and you will sit on the presidium. I won’t be able to sit with you, so you will understand very little of what is said. There will be speeches. Then, after the speeches are over, there will be a reception at the rear of the stage, where our great Premier, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, will welcome you as a member of the American proletariat to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I think we should go.”
The same car and driver waited for them and, on the trip from the Ukraine to the Bolshoi, Artemis counted seventy portraits of the man he was about to meet. They entered the Bolshoi by a back door. He was taken onto the stage, where the speeches had begun. The jubilee was being televised and the lights for this made the stage as hot as a desert, an illusion that was extended by the fact that the stage was flanked with plastic palm trees. Artemis could understand nothing that was said, but he looked around for the Premier. He was not in the principal box. This was occupied by two very old women. At the end of an hour of speeches, his anguish turned to boredom and the unease of a full bladder. At the end of another hour, he was merely sleepy. Then the ceremony ended. There was a buffet backstage and he went there as he had been directed, expecting Khrushchev to make his terrifying appearance, but the Premier was not around and when Artemis asked if he was expected, he was given no answer. He ate a sandwich and drank a glass of wine. No one spoke to him. He decided to walk home from the Bolshoi in order to stretch his legs. As soon as he left the theatre, a policeman stopped him. He kept repeating the name of his hotel and pointing to his shoes, and when the policeman understood, he gave him directions. Off went Artemis. It seemed to be the same route he had taken in the car, but all the portraits of Khrushchev had vanished. All those pictures that had beamed down on him from bakeries, lampposts, and walls were gone. He thought he was lost, until he crossed a bridge over the Moskva River that he remembered for its banners. They no longer flew. When he reached the hotel, he looked for a large portrait of Khrushchev that had hung in the lobby. Gone. So, like many other travelers before him, he went upstairs to a strange room in a strange country humming the unreality blues. How could he have guessed that Khrushchev had been deposed?