The Prince of the Soviets

6. MOSCOW SAVANNAH

I’ve signed a contract for the next eleven months and am now officially head of the Moscow Office at United Press. It’s an impressive title, but in fact, the office consists of only one person. So, I have been put in charge of myself.

The first thing I had to do was to pay a visit to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and fill out a sheaf of forms. In order not to arouse undue curiosity, I introduced myself as a New Yorker of Russian origin who had lived several years in China. This seemed to do the trick.

Next, I went to the so-called Press Department, which is the name for the Soviet censors’ office, through which every single article sent abroad must pass.

The Soviet censors seemed a pleasant, well-educated bunch. They all wear spectacles, speak three or four foreign languages, and every one of them is a distinguished revolutionary. Once upon a time, they escaped the evils of Tsarism by going into exile in Europe and spent their time denouncing all those who stifled freedom in Russia. They came back after 1917, and now, they are the ones trying to rid the country of any ideas that offend the powers that be.

The head of the department, Yakov Weinstein, immediately explained the official line to me to forestall any foolish questions on my part.

“True freedom of speech is only possible here in the USSR,” he said. “Ours is the only country in which workers can freely have their say in the press without fearing for their lives. No other nation publishes letters from peasants in its newspapers.”

I have read some of these letters, according to which the inhabitants of remote villages in Siberia use the modern metric system to measure their land, and a proud Don Cossack calls himself a muzhik, a commoner. What does it matter that for a genuine Cossack warrior, such an epithet would be an insult? Such minor details mean nothing to the average reader of Pravda.

“Censorship is a measure we find unavoidable, or at least, necessary,” Weinstein told me, stroking his impressive, tightly curled beard, which made him look rather like a priest. “Unfortunately, foreign journalists are doing their best to damage the reputation of our country in the eyes of the international proletariat. Sometimes, they have no bad intentions; they simply misunderstand the situation. One reporter, for instance, reported that troops had been brought into Moscow after seeing soldiers on the street. In fact, what he saw was merely a group of cadets on their way to the bathhouse. But sometimes foreign journalists deliberately distort the facts. Not long ago, the Daily Telegraph reported that the OGPU was shooting workers. Now tell me—have you seen a single execution or dead body in Moscow?”

I admitted I’ve not seen anything of the sort. And how am I to know what goes on in the cellars of the Lubyanka?

“I’m glad to see you take such a level-headed view of the situation,” said Weinstein, delighted. “We like to lend a helping hand to foreign correspondents and relieve them of the responsibility of digging out information for themselves. Every time a noteworthy event takes place, we send out a communiqué. Journalists write their articles on the basis of our bulletins, and then the material is sent to press. As you can see, we have no intention of standing in your way.”

He also added that if I reported objectively on events, he would help me make a career for myself as a journalist.

“I trust you realize,” he said, “that any success you may have had with a Chinese radio station is neither here nor there. As soon as your contract expires, you will have to find a new job. Stay on the right side of Owen and our department, and you can be assured of glowing references.”

I’m sure this is what he tells every new correspondent. Basically, it was a warning: should I get on the wrong side of Weinstein, the censors will make it impossible for me to work, and my employers will fire me for failing to reach an agreement with the local authorities.

As a matter of fact, Owen also demanded absolute objectivity just before he left Moscow, telling me that if I had anything important that would not get past the censor, I should smuggle it out to London.

“You’ll have to find your own way of sending articles abroad,” he said. “But you have to be very careful. If you’re caught, you could be expelled from the Soviet Union. We’ve already had some cases of expulsion. The Soviet officials are convinced that only the ‘enemies of the working class’ are capable of criticizing their actions, and they believe these enemies should be ‘neutralized.’ So, don’t take unnecessary risks.”

Seibert advised Klim to rent an apartment from a friend of his, Elkin.

Elkin was a small man, all angles and sharp edges, with a hooked nose and a ginger toothbrush mustache. He had grown rich during the NEP years and brought a decaying mansion in the elite district of Chistye Prudy in the center of Moscow. Soon, he had opened a secondhand bookstore called Moscow Savannah on the ground floor while renting the rooms on the floor above to foreigners.

“We still haven’t finished refurbishing the building,” he said apologetically as he showed Klim and Kitty around the apartment. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s impossible to get ahold of building materials at the moment.”

It was true that the living room had patches of crumbling plaster on the walls, and the parquet floor was scored and scratched as though heavy furniture had been dragged across it. But it also had arched windows of colored glass and a fireplace decorated with sky-blue ceramic tiles. Elkin had also thrown in some extra pieces of furniture—a piano in need of tuning, a divan, and a ladies’ dressing table with candlesticks in the shape of giraffes.

There were a great many giraffes in the apartment; they adorned everything in sight, from the door handles to the lace curtains.

“What do you think?” Klim asked Kitty. “Would you like to live here?”

“Yes!” Kitty was staring wide-eyed at the bronze heads and horns on the light fitting. “Look at all the funny horses!”

Elkin asked for an astronomical sum in rent—two thousand American dollars for eleven months. “At present, I am in some financial difficulty,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t take any less.”

In the course of the next few days, he and Klim haggled over the rent in a series of telephone calls.

“I’d be better off in the Grand Hotel,” Klim protested. “It’s cheaper there, and the plaster isn’t falling off the walls.”

“I’m asking a reasonable price,” Elkin kept repeating in a tedious voice. “You won’t find a private apartment anywhere else in Moscow. The house has a telephone, a stove in the kitchen, a storeroom, and a bathroom. You’ll need a bathroom for your daughter.”

“But you’re asking more in rent than I earn!”

Eventually, Klim knocked the price down to a thousand dollars. United Press agreed to give him an advance on his future salary, and he moved into the apartment on Chistye Prudy.

That evening, a tousle-headed old man dressed in a torn padded jacket appeared at Klim’s door and introduced himself in a deep voice, “My name’s Afrikan. I’m the yard keeper here. And this old girl is Snapper.” He pointed to a fat white dog skulking at his felt boots. “She’s our guard dog. We’ve brought you a present, see? We thought you might need something to sit on to play the piano.” He held out a stool cobbled together from pieces of birch wood.

Klim gave the yard keeper a ruble, and Afrikan promised he would make three more stools for “his excellency” so that Klim could receive visitors.

“Did you see our new tenant, Snapper?” he muttered admiringly as they went downstairs. “A prince—a Soviet prince! I thought there were no more of his kind left.”

The dog whined as if in agreement. The new tenants had won her respect straight away as Kitty had treated Snapper to the skin from her salami.

United Press has more than a thousand clients throughout the world, and every day, I have to send dispatches to New York, London, Berlin, and Tokyo. Then my cables are sorted and sent out to the local papers—our subscribers.

It turns out that, as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, finding a story is a devil of a job. All the material sent out by the Press Department consists of dull accounts of government sessions and decrees, so I have to rely on my own wits.

I was wrong to think that Soviet citizens would be happy to speak to me if I showed them a press pass. Foreigners in Moscow are kept apart from the local population not only by the language barrier but also by the fear of the OGPU. After all my years abroad, I have developed a slight foreign accent, and besides that, my clothes give the game away completely, so people here are wary of me as they are with any “guest from overseas.”

The only Soviet citizens prepared to talk to me are the simplest souls. Yesterday, I interviewed a delegate to the All-Union Communist Party Congress from the Yakutia in the east of Siberia. I asked him what they were voting on, and it turned out he knew nothing about politics whatsoever but was so grateful to the Party that he was willing to approve anything.

“Before the revolution, I was nothing but a reindeer herder,” he explained. “The Party brought me up in the world. I’ve come to Moscow! Why would I go against them?”

He wandered around the gilded corridors of the Tsar’s palace that had once played host to royal receptions, putting out a finger to touch the huge mirrors and laughing in delight.

“Now I’ve seen everything!” he said as we parted. “I can go to my grave happy.”

The censor didn’t like my interview with the reindeer herder.

“What is this?” Weinstein said, frowning when I brought him the papers to sign. “We sent you a communiqué. Isn’t that enough for you?”

The communiqué had been on the subject of “the fight against political bias in the interests of improving the organizational work of the Party.”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Weinstein to pass my article.

“We don’t know yet if we can count on you,” he said. “Don’t think of taking any liberties before you have our trust.”

There are around forty foreign correspondents in Moscow. We visit each other often to dance, play poker, and exchange gossip. The strict censorship and the dearth of information only heighten the thrill of the chase for us. We all compete to see who can be the first to dig up some story and send it out to a foreign press office.

It may not be as prestigious to work in the USSR as in Europe, but my journalist colleagues all agree that they wouldn’t change Soviet Russia for anything. We enjoy unheard-of privileges here: we earn huge salaries by local standards, live in private apartments, and have access to embassy doctors and cooperative stores of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs where you can buy coffee, cocoa, different cheeses, and even exotic fruits. We’re not afraid of all the local petty tyrants or the secret police. After all, we can leave the country at any moment.

There’s a word for what we have—FREEDOM, the same freedom that was a cherished dream for several generations of Russian revolutionaries. Oddly enough, since 1917, the only people in the USSR who enjoy any sort of freedom are the foreign diplomats and journalists.

Even high-ranking Party officials are not immune to high-handed treatment from those at the top. A few days ago, I rang the former Central Committee member, Grigory Zinoviev, who, like Trotsky, has been placed under house arrest. When I asked him how he was, he said in a trembling voice, “Wait a minute. I need to have a word with my comrades.”

Without permission from his superiors, he can’t even complain of a cold. Outside his gilded cage, he has nowhere to run.

No other job I have had has aroused such a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Soviet Russia is an extraordinary amalgam of the most benighted superstition and ignorance and the most advanced ideas, inspired creativity, and belief in the future. Despite everything, many people believe that here, in the USSR, it will be possible to build a new world, a world in which all the dreams of mankind will somehow be realized.

I am going to public lectures at the university, and I am struck by the intelligence and inventiveness of Soviet scholars. Architects are designing extraordinary buildings, Sergei Eisenstein is making astonishing films, and meanwhile, the crudest, most vile propaganda is being disseminated on all sides. The disenfranchised are being hounded mercilessly, and nobody seems capable of an ounce of fellow feeling. There’s a lot of talk of a “sacred struggle” or a “sacred war,” and it seems that the majority of the population approve.

My biggest problem though is that I have no time to search for Nina. Life here is a constant mad rush: my telephone never stops ringing, couriers from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs are always bringing new communiqués, and I keep having to run off somewhere to attend some event or other.

While I am away, Afrikan is keeping an eye on Kitty, who has already decided she wants to be a yard keeper when she grows up. Now her favorite game is sweeping the floor, muttering in a deep voice, “The Russian people have gone to the dogs. New this, new that—you mark my words, the only thing that comes of new boots is aching feet.”

Kitty has also become friendly with Snapper. The two of them share an interest in hunting out the boot grease, which Afrikan hides. It is made with bacon fat. Snapper can sniff it out, Kitty gets it out, and they both have a treat.

I have been around all the kindergartens in the area and found out a number of shocking things: The nursery teacher in the Golden Fish makes the children stay out in the freezing cold on purpose so that they get sick. The less children she has to look after every day, the less work for her. The nanny in the Rowan Tree tells the children she can take her eyes out and put them up on a high shelf so that they can see everything that is going on. The thought of these eyes, separated from their owner, is enough to induce nervous hiccups in the children.

In the third kindergarten, a good one, there are no free places, and in the fourth, they refused to take Kitty because she was a foreigner. Apparently, the director was afraid my daughter was some tiny spy who might force her to disclose important strategic information about her high chairs and bibs.

I advertised for a helper: a responsible woman who spoke fluent English with teacher training, typing skills, and excellent references, good with children, and a good knowledge of Moscow in case I had to send her off on some errand. I also stipulated that she should be able to cook and clean and take on the running of a household.

It soon became apparent that angels of this sort are simply not to be found. Even if they did exist, they would hardly be tempted by the modest salary I was offering of thirty rubles and the tiny storeroom in which I hoped to install my new helper.

Seibert told me that in any case, I would not be allowed to hire outside help—apparently, you need special permission to do so.

“The Soviet authorities want to know what goes on in the houses of foreigners,” Seibert said. “So, they’ll send you from pillar to post for all sorts of official documents. And then, when they’ve finally weakened your morale, they’ll plant an OGPU agent in your house.”

“What about your Lieschen,” I asked, remembering his maid. “Does she work for the OGPU too?”

“Naturally,” said Seibert. “But she’s very fond of me, all the same.”

Afrikan appeared at the entrance to Klim’s room accompanied by a dark-browed girl in a peasant coat and a paisley headscarf.

“I’ve brought someone to see you, sir,” he said.

The girl held a rolled mattress under her arm, a knapsack on her back, and from her elbow hung a string of ring-shaped rolls.

“Hello, mister prince, sir,” said the girl, bowing from the waist.

Klim looked quizzically at Afrikan. “And who might this be?”

“A serving girl for you, that’s who,” he said. “Her name is Kapitolina. She’s a fool of a girl, I grant you, but you’ll find she’s a hard worker. And she’s got a certificate.”

The certificate was a “Certification of the Right to Operate a Stove and Boiler,” and it stated that Comrade Kapitolina Ignatevna Kozlova was “trained in the rules of operation of heating appliances and in safety procedures.”

“She can watch the little one,” said Afrikan, “and cook you breakfast. And she’s handy with a needle too. She’s my own niece, from Biruylevo village—I can vouch for her. She came to the city to earn money for her dowry, but mind you don’t pay her anything—it’s against the law unless you get permission. Instead, just get her a nice piece of cloth the next time you’re at that cooperative of yours. And if anyone comes from the Labor Inspectorate, you can tell them she’s visiting me and helping you out.”

Klim looked the blushing serving girl up and down. “Do you know Moscow well?” he asked her.

“I do indeed!” she exclaimed. “It’s the best city on earth. This is the third time I’ve been. There’s so much to see!”

“Can you read and write?”

Kapitolina hung her head, her brow furrowed.

Afrikan took Klim aside. “Look at her!” he whispered, gesturing toward Kapitolina’s generous buttocks. “Time was, you’d have had to keep a fine girl like that under lock and key. But now there are no men in the village to speak of—half of them dead in the war, and nothing left but the scrapings of the pot: old men, drunks, and cripples. Without a dowry, no decent man will take a wife.”

“Is your niece good with children?” asked Klim.

“She has five younger brothers and looked after the lot of them, and not one of them died.”

“Uncle Afrikan tells me you’ll let me live in the storeroom,” said Kapitolina. “If that’s true, I’ll do anything you like: I’ll wash your dishes with my tears, whatever you say.”

“I think that would be going a little too far,” said Klim, and he asked her to make a start on the washing right way. Kitty hadn’t a single clean pair of stockings left.

It could hardly be said that things began to run smoothly with Kapitolina’s arrival in the house, but life took on added interest.

Kapitolina brought her possessions with her from the village—a huge metal-bound chest and a large icon so soot-blackened that the image of the saint it depicted was all but invisible.

“Who’s that?” asked Kitty.

“That’s my little god,” Kapitolina said affectionately. That same evening, she taught Kitty to kneel before the icon and prostrate herself before it, which Kitty enjoyed hugely.

On top of the chest Kapitolina laid a mattress that had been stuffed with old banknotes—worthless since the currency reform. During the war, her father had earned a pile of money selling straw at inflated prices, and he had hidden it all in the mattress, intending it to serve as a dowry for his daughter.

“Well, at least I can sleep like a millionaire,” she said, plumping up her treasured mattress.

From the trunk, she produced embroidery frames, knitting needles, crochet hooks, and balls of yarn and thread. Soon, the apartment began to fill up with decorative cloths and ornamental towels.

“It’s prettier like this,” she said, spreading a cloth embroidered with roosters over the typewriter.

Klim kept taking away the cloth, but the following day, there it would be again in the same place.

Kapitolina had firm ideas about domestic economy. “You should eat the stale bread before you start on the fresh,” she lectured Klim.

“But if I do that, the fresh bread will have gone stale by the time I eat it,” he objected. “Am I supposed to live on dry rusks?”

Kapitolina’s cheeks reddened with indignation. “Fine then! Let the bread rot and the house burn, and let’s all go to the devil!” she cried.

Klim did not back down, so Kapitolina would eat up the stale bread herself to not let good food go to waste. She did nothing by halves: if she was making soup, she would boil up a whole vat full of it; if she started on the washing, she would set all the linen to soak at once, not leaving a single dry sheet for the night.

“You great dolt!” Afrikan scolded her. “You donkey!”

Kapitolina would sometimes roar with laughter. At other times, she would snap back, “Stop your yelling! You’re not living in the Tsarist regime now!”

One day, hearing Snapper barking and Kitty squealing, Klim went into the kitchen to see what was going on.

“Get rid of this fool of a girl!” Afrikan demanded. “She’s just burned a pound of your coffee.”

“Informer!” Kapitolina wailed. “Why are you such a backstabber?”

“I’m not a backstabber. I’m trying to see you do things right. What did you think—that the master wouldn’t miss all that coffee?”

“Well, he didn’t miss the cup, did he?”

“What cup?” asked Klim, frowning.

Kapitolina and Afrikan both fell silent. There was a tense pause.

“The cup was on the table, and they had a fight and started running around the table,” Kitty explained. “And everything fell off. But there’s no need to get mad, Daddy. Kapitolina gave me my milk in a tin.”

Klim took some money from his wallet. “Kapitolina, go out for me and buy us some new cups.”

“Don’t go sending that great lummox out to a china shop!” cried Afrikan in horror. “She’ll break everything in sight.”

But Kapitolina was already winding the paisley scarf around her head. “Yes, sir, this minute, sir! I’ll be quick, so I will—I swear to God.”

Klim had wanted a guardian angel to relieve him of his household chores, but Kapitolina was more like a goddess of destruction. He could not use her as a courier either. She did not know Moscow, and in any case, she was not allowed to go anywhere. Anyone taking messages from a foreigner needed official permission.

Klim bit the bullet and went to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to ask permission to hire an assistant.

Weinstein was clearly delighted at this turn of events. “We’ll find you somebody with just the right qualifications,” he promised.

“Sir,” Kapitolina hissed and ran up to Klim on tiptoe—she believed that this was less distracting. “There’s a woman asking about a job as a courier. Her name is Galina Dorina.”

Klim told Kapitolina to let the prospective courier in, and in walked a diminutive, shabbily dressed woman with an extraordinary face. She had almond-shaped eyes the color of honey, a long thin nose, and full, pale lips. With her looks, Comrade Dorina would have been well-suited to play the role of a Christian martyr from ancient Byzantine icons.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “I’ve been sent from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.”

“Sit down,” said Klim, pointing to the divan, “and tell me about yourself.”

Comrade Dorina asked Klim to call her Galina. She told him that there was nothing much to say about her life. She had worked until quite recently as a filing clerk. But now, the Commissariat was laying off staff, and she was looking for a new position.

“Have you ever worked as a courier?” asked Klim.

“No, but I know Moscow well—I grew up here. And I have a good pair of felt boots. If you don’t take me on, you should ask the other candidates about their footwear. Without felt boots, you’ll find your courier ending up in bed with a cold.”

“Do you have any other skills?”

“I can type in Russian, English, and French and do shorthand.”

“Could you type something for me as a test?”

Galina sat at the typewriter like a pianist at her instrument and shot an enquiring glance at Klim. He began to dictate the first article that caught his eye from the Times: “The Soviet Union’s economic experiments are continuing to amaze the world…”

Galina clattered away confidently at the keys and, in just a few minutes, had typed out an article about the budget crisis in the USSR. Klim could not believe his eyes: there was not a single typing error in the whole text.

“And with your skills, you still want to be a courier?” he asked.

Galina shrugged. “I need any work. And I’ve heard that foreigners have their salary paid on time. Is it true?”

Klim nodded. So long as this Galina did not ask for too high a wage, there seemed little point in interviewing anyone else for the job.

As he looked at her, he noticed an ugly lilac scar on her neck, protruding from beneath the collar of her blouse.

“I see you’re looking at my scar,” Galina said. “Perhaps you’d better ask me right away how I got it. Otherwise, if I come and work for you, you’ll only keep wondering about it.”

Klim smiled. “How did you get it?” He rather liked this Galina.

“My husband was a commissar in the civil war,” she said. “The White bandits set fire to our house down. I had to carry my daughter out in my arms, but my husband died. I was badly burned.”

“How do you manage alone with your child?”

“What’s there to manage? There’s not much washing as we hardly have any clothes, not much cleaning as we live in one small room, and we don’t have anything much to cook either.”

She got up. “Well, I’ll be going now. If you would like to take me on, you can call me—I have a telephone at home.”

Klim saw her out.

In the hall, Galina pulled on a pair of huge men’s felt boots. “Goodbye,” she said.

Suddenly, she looked at Klim with a serious expression. “There’s just one thing I want to say. There’s a mistake in your paper, the Times. Socialism isn’t an experiment; it’s a necessary stage of human development.”

“Let’s look at it logically—” began Klim, but Galina interrupted him.

“We don’t need your logic! What can you and the Times possibly know about us? You’re trying to crush us, to undermine our belief in our own strength, but we don’t care! We…” Galina put her hand on her heart. “We know that there is not a capitalist army in the world that can defeat us. We shall never surrender; we shall fight to the end for our bright future.”

Suddenly, she became embarrassed. Her face reddened, and her lips began to tremble as if she were about to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve spoiled everything, and you won’t employ me now. I just wanted to make you understand…”

There was no need for explanations. Klim could see that Galina lived a very hard life and that all her hopes were tied up in the idea of the “bright future,” which the Soviet press continued to depict in such glowing colors. The article from the Times was challenging this belief, so Galina refused furiously to accept the facts cited by the foreign journalist.

“I’ll take you on for the job,” said Klim. “But let’s agree on one thing: we all have a right to our own opinion: you, I, and the Times newspaper.

Galina nodded, bitterly. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you? I’m badly in need of one, but I left my packet at home.”

“I don’t smoke,” Klim told her. “I have a small daughter, so I won’t allow cigarettes in the house.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I was just a little flustered.”

Galina ran outside, and Klim went back to his room. He watched from the window as she cadged a cigarette from a young man loitering by the skating rink across the road. She smoked it hungrily, looking back now and again at the Moscow Savannah building.

Klim had no doubt that Galina would inform on him. Well, let her inform the authorities that he had sent off a dozen cables checked by the censor or that he had gone to a stationery store to buy blotting paper. Perhaps she might even earn a ruble or two for herself.