Portraits and Observations (23 page)

Mrs. Gershwin, who intended giving a “really good” Christmas present to every member of the
Porgy and Bess
cast (“After all, darling, it’s the company’s fourth Christmas together, and I do want to show the darlings my appreciation”), still had a few odds and ends to finish off, though she’d carted a trunkload of gifts from Berlin. And so, struggling through the Nevsky crowds (“You can’t deny there’s a lot of vitality around here,” said Lyons), we visited a furrier where the cheapest sable was a short jacket selling, or rather not selling, for $11,000. Then we stopped at an antique shop declared by Intourist to be Leningrad’s most “elegant.” The antiques turned out to be used television sets, an icebox, an old American electric fan, some battered pieces of Biedermeier and a colossal number of oil paintings depicting scenes of historical event if not value. “What did you expect, darling?” said Mrs. Gershwin. “There’s no such thing as Russian antiques. If there are, they’re French.” Inquiring for caviar, we went to two fancy-food stores, the local Vendômes; there were pineapples from Africa, oranges from Israel, fresh lichee nuts from China; but no caviar. “Where,
where
did I get the idea it was the butter on the workingman’s bread?” lamented Mrs. Gershwin, who said she’d settle for a cup of tea, a desire that shortly drove
us into a Soviet version of Schrafft’s. It was in a cellar, a dungeon where waitresses, wearing knee boots and tiaras made of doily paper, waded across slush-flooded floors carrying trays of ice cream and improbable pastry to gloomy groups of middle-aged women. But Mrs. Gershwin had to do without her tea, for there were no tables available, nor even space to stand.

So far, no one had made a single purchase. Mrs. Gershwin decided to try a department store. On the way, Lyons, who had a camera, paused often to take photographs, of match women and cherry-cheeked girls dragging Christmas trees, of street-corner flower stalls that in winter sell artificial roses, paper tulips stuck in flowerpots, as though they were real. Each of his photographic forays caused pedestrian traffic jams, a gallery of silent spectators who smiled, and sometimes scowled, when he took their pictures, too. Presently I noticed that there was one man who continuously showed up among the onlookers, yet did not seem part of them. He always stood at the rear, a chunky man with a crooked nose. He was bundled in a black coat and astrakhan cap and half his face was hidden behind the kind of windshield dark glasses skiers wear. I lost track of him before we reached the department store.

The store was reminiscent of a carnival alley, consisting, as it did, of counters and alcoves whose shelves seemed mostly stocked with shooting gallery prizes, the cheap familiar dolls, ugly urns, plaster animals, the toilette set bedded in a crumpling of white casket silk. Mrs. Gershwin, overcome by an odor of rancid glue, felt swift necessity to leave the “leather-goods” department, a swifter one to flee the perfume counter.

A crowd began trailing us through the store, and when, in an alcove devoted to hats, I started trying on caps of ersatz Persian lamb, a good thirty grinning, jostling Russians ganged around demanding I buy this one, that one, themselves whisking models on and off my head and ordering the clerk to bring more, more, until hats were
toppling off the counter. Someone bent to retrieve one from the floor; it was the man wearing ski glasses. The hat I bought, chosen at desperate random, proved later not to fit. A fake astrakhan, it cost $45; and because of the complicated payment system that operates in all Soviet stores, from the humblest grocery to GUM’s in Moscow, it required another forty minutes to complete the transaction. First, the clerk gives you a sales slip, which you carry to a cashier’s booth, where you cool your heels while the cashier does her computations on an abacus, an efficient method no doubt, still, some clever Soviet should invent the cash register; when the money has been paid, the cashier stamps the sales slip, and this you take back to the clerk, who by now is attending five other people; eventually, though, the clerk will accept the slip, go to check it with the cashier, come back, hand over your purchase, and direct you to a wrapping department, where you join another queue. At the end of this process, I was given my hat in a green box. “Please, darling,” Mrs. Gershwin begged Lyons, who was tempted to buy a hat himself. “
Don’t
make us go through all that again.”

Ski-glasses was nowhere in sight when we left the store. He turned up soon enough, however, at the edge of a group watching Lyons photograph peddlers selling Christmas trees in a snowy courtyard. It was there in the courtyard that I left the hatbox; I must have put it down to slap my numbed hands together. I didn’t realize it was missing until many blocks later. Lyons and Mrs. Gershwin were game to go back and look for it. But that wasn’t necessary. For as we turned around, we saw Ski-glasses coming toward us, and dangling in his hand was the green hatbox. He gave it to me with a smile that twitched his crooked nose. Before I could think to say thank you, he’d tipped his cap and walked away.

“Well, ho ho—call that a coincidence?” crowed Lyons, a joyous shine livening his shrewd eyes. “Oh, I’ve had
him
spotted!”

“So have I,” admitted Mrs. Gershwin. “But I think it’s darling.
Adorable. Simply adorable of them to take such good care of us. It makes you feel so protected. Well, darling,” she said, as though determined Lyons should be persuaded to adopt her view, “
isn’t
it a comfort to know you can’t
lose
anything in Russia?”

At the Astoria, after lunch, I rode up in the elevator with Ira Wolfert, the former war correspondent who supposedly intended writing an article on Everyman Opera’s tour for the
Reader’s Digest
. “But I’m still looking for a story. What it seems to me is, is repetitious,” Wolfert told me. “And you can’t talk to anybody around here. Russians, I mean. It’s giving me claustrophobia, every time I get into a political talk I keep getting the same old line. I was talking to Savchenko, he’s supposed to be an intelligent guy, and I said to him, since this is a private talk, do you
honestly
believe all these things you’re saying about America? You know, he was saying how Wall Street runs the country. But you can’t talk to them. There’s no realism in this social realism. Yesterday I was talking to a Russian—I won’t define him, one of the guys we’ve met around here—and he slips me a note. This note asking me to call his sister in New York. He has a sister living there. Later on I see this guy on the street. I pull him down a side street and say, ‘What the hell goes on here?’ And he says, ‘Everything’s fine. Only it’s better to be careful.’ Everything’s fine, but the guy’s slipping me notes!” Wolfert bit hard on his pipe, and shook his head. “There’s no realism. I’m getting claustrophobia.”

Upstairs, I could hear the telephone ringing inside my room as I unlocked the door. It was the man I’d met during an intermission at the ballet, Miss Ryan’s admirer, Stefan Orlov. He said he’d been calling Miss Ryan but there was no answer. I suggested he try the Breens’ suite, one room of which Miss Ryan was using as an office.
“No,” he said, sounding nervously apologetic. “I must not call again. So soon. But when may I see Nancy?
And
you?” he added, tactfully. I asked him if he would like to come by the hotel for a drink. There was a pause that lasted until I thought we’d been disconnected. Finally he said, “That would not be convenient. But could you meet me, say, in an hour?” I said yes, where? He told me, “Walk around the cathedral. St. Isaac’s. Keep walking. I will see you.” He rang off without saying good-bye.

I went down to the Breens’ suite to tell Miss Ryan of the invitation. She was delighted, “I knew he’d call,” but crestfallen, “I’m stuck with six copies of a rush item,” she said, inserting layers of paper and carbon into a portable typewriter. The rush item was a two-page letter written by Robert Breen and addressed to Charles E. Bohlen, the American Ambassador to Russia. It began by expressing gratitude over the fact that Ambassador and Mrs. Bohlen were coming to Leningrad for the
Porgy and Bess
première; but the bulk of the letter was in a tone of grieving complaint. Although the production’s Soviet tour had the blessings of the U.S. State Department, it was not, contrary to the popular impression, under their official sponsorship. Indeed, the trip had been made financially possible by Russia’s own Ministry of Culture. Nevertheless, Breen felt it was “a crying shame” no member of Ambassador Bohlen’s staff had been permanently assigned to the company to observe “the day-to-day and minute-to-minute happenings, the individual contacts, and the spontaneous, warm incidents” that Breen considered necessary if the Embassy intended to “prepare properly the sort of full and valid report which rightfully should be expected on this unprecedented project.” Breen wrote, “The need for such documentation concerns not only this goodwill tour, important as it is, but also possible future cultural exchanges. No one can imagine the extreme lengths to which we have gone to provide smooth running—or
the infinite amount of details which have to be foreseen and arranged if this type of exchange is to bear the fruit of its promise. The documentation should record not only our successes, but also those facets of public relations which might be improved, and the possible failures.”

“Give my love to Stefan,” Miss Ryan instructed, as I left to keep the appointment. “And if it turns out to be a spontaneous, warm incident, be sure and tell me so I can put it in the
Porgy and Bess
log,” she said, referring to an official journal of that title maintained by her employers.

It’s a stone’s throw from the Astoria to the semi-Gothic mass of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I left the hotel at exactly three-thirty, the time Orlov had said he would meet me. But on stepping out the door, I found myself confronting a pair of ski glasses. There was an Intourist Ziv parked at the curb, and the man was sitting in the front seat talking to a chauffeur. For a moment I thought of returning to the hotel; it seemed the sensible course if Orlov was concerned that his rendezvous be off the record. But I decided to stroll past the car and see what happened; as I went by, nerves and an unreliable sense of etiquette prompted me to nod at the man. He yawned and averted his face. I didn’t look back until I’d crossed the square and was in the shadows of St. Isaac’s. By then, the car was gone. I walked slowly around the cathedral, pretending to admire the architecture, though there was no reason to pretend anything, for the sidewalks were deserted. Still, I felt conspicuous, and not quite lawful. Night swept the sky like the black crows that wheeled and cawed overhead. On the third lap around, I began to suspect Orlov had changed his mind. I tried to forget the cold by counting my steps, and had ticked off two hundred and sixteen when, turning a corner, I came on a scene that made the flow of numbers stop like the hands of a dropped watch.

It was this: four men in black had a fifth man backed against the cathedral wall. They were pounding him with their fists, pushing him forward and hitting him with the full weight of their bodies, like football players practicing on a dummy. A woman, respectably dressed and carrying a pocketbook tucked under her arm, stood on the sidelines as though she were casually waiting while some men friends finished a business conversation. Except for the cawing of crows, it was like an episode from a silent film; no one made a sound, and as the four attackers relinquished the man, leaving him spread-eagled on the snow, they glanced at me indifferently, joined the woman and walked off without a word between them. I went over to the man. He was fat, too heavy for me to lift, and the drink on his breath would have killed scorpions. He was not bleeding and he was not unconscious, but he wanted to speak and couldn’t; he gazed up at me like a deaf-mute attempting to communicate with his eyes.

A headlighted car pulled alongside the curb. The strip of black and white checks bordering its frame identified it as a taxi. The rear door opened, and Stefan Orlov called my name. Leaning in the door, I tried to explain what had happened and ask him to help the man, but he was impatient, he didn’t want to listen, he kept saying, “Get in,” and, “Will you
please
get in”; and at last, with a fury that shocked me, “You’re an idiot!” he said, yanking me onto the seat. As the taxi swung in a U-turn, its headlights exposed the man sprawled on the sidewalk, his lifted hands plowing the air, like the claws of an insect cruelly tumbled on its back.

“I’m sorry,” said Orlov, regaining a civil voice that also managed to sound sincerely remorseful. “But other people’s quarrels. They are not so much interesting, you understand. Now, enjoy yourself. We are going to the Eastern.” He commented on Miss Ryan’s absence and regretted “deeply” that she’d been unable to accept his
invitation. “The Eastern is where you want to take a girl like Nancy. Very good food. Music. A bit of Oriental atmosphere.” After the clandestine nature of our meeting, it struck me as curious that we were now proceeding anywhere as gay and public as he described; and I said so. He was hurt. “I have no fears, but I’m not an idiot either. The Astoria is a sensitive place. You understand? It’s a nuisance to go there. Why shouldn’t I see you if I like?” he said, asking himself the question. “You are a singer, I’m interested in music.” He was under the impression that both Miss Ryan and myself were singers in the cast of
Porgy and Bess
. When I corrected him, and told him I was a writer, he seemed upset. He had lighted a cigarette, and his lips, pursed to blow out the match, tautened. “Are you a correspondent?” he asked, letting the flame burn. I said no, not what he meant by a correspondent. He blew on the match. “Because I hate correspondents,” he said, rather warningly, as though I’d best not be lying to him. “They’re filthy. And Americans, it’s too bad to say, are the worst. The filthiest.” Now that he knew I was a writer, I thought perhaps he saw the situation in a different, less harmless perspective, and so suggested that if the taxi would take me within walking distance of the Astoria, we could amicably part company then and there. He interpreted this as a protest to his opinion of American correspondents. “Please, you misunderstand. I admire so much the American
people
,” he said, and told me that the years he’d spent in Washington “were of a happiness I never forget. The Russians who lived in New York were always very snobbish about the Russians who had to live in Washington; they said, ‘Oh, my dear, Washington is so
boring
and provincial.’ ” He laughed at his grande-dame imitation. “But for me, I liked it there. The hot streets in the summer. Bourbon whiskey. I liked so much my flat. I open my windows and pour myself a bourbon,” he said, as though reliving these actions. “I sit in my underwear and drink the bourbon and play the Vic loudly
as I like. There is a girl I know. Two girls. One of them always comes by.”