Around the World With Auntie Mame

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Around the World With Auntie Mame Page 19

by Dennis, Patrick


  “Are you comfortable, comrade?” Auntie Mame asked Ito.

  “No, madam,” Ito said and giggled.

  “Ito! How many times have I told you to stop calling me madam! I have given you your freedom. I have released you from your bondage and set you free to find yourself in a world of men, after years of selfishly forcing you to the yoke of domestic servitude. I hope, Comrade Ito,” she said more kindly, “that some day you will forgive me.”

  “You don’t worry, Madam Comrade,” Ito said, going off into peals of laughter.

  “Besides,” Auntie Mame said, “we should all feel very lucky to be riding in a first class compartment.”

  “First class?” I said, wondering what the masses were going through in the other cars. “But I thought that Russia had a classless society. How come, Auntie Mame?”

  “Why, dushka, it’s because, uh, it’s because . . . Well, I mean to say that . . . Why don’t you explain to Patrick, Dr. Whipple?”

  “Why, um, certainly, um,” Dr. Whipple began, stroking his straggly little gray goatee. “It’s, ah, simply that, uh, ah, International, ah, guests and, ah, certain, um, Soviet intellectuals, um, are, ah, treated as guests of the, ah, government. Um. Yes, ah, that’s it exactly. Just, ah, so.”

  I was accustomed by now to Dr. Whipple’s making absolutely no sense and taking forever to do it. He was an old poop of about sixty. Just what he was a doctor of I never knew. Several things, probably, from the scrambled alphabet that appeared behind his name. Dr. Whipple was one of those people who are always going to other places to do whatever it is they can’t do wherever they happen to be at the moment. He had spent most of his life taking courses in abstruse subjects in far-away universities and accumulating initials to put after the Euclid (that was his first name, no kidding) Alonzo Whipple, Junior. They looked very impressive on his grubby little visiting cards. Auntie Mame picked him up in Budapest after her flight from Austria. Dr. Whipple was studying something or other at good old Budapest U. and had come to her rescue with a neat Hungarian translation when Auntie Mame was having a little difficulty ordering a Sidecar in the Abazzia-Kaveha. The rest was history.

  Auntie Mame had been living like an Eszterhazy at the Dunapalota for about ten cents a day when Dr. Whipple, having befriended her, and cadged a free meal in that pretty Danube cafe, took it upon himself to revamp her social conscience. Every day they drove out in the Rolls to the Angels’ Field to see how the downtrodden Magyars lived under the Horthy regime, with Dr. Whipple as our guide. He was a great friend of the masses, although it occurred to me that the masses didn’t think much of Dr. Whipple. And I also noticed that he came back in time to take his meals at the Dunapalota, apparently preferring the Ritz cuisine to the noodle-and-potato dishes of the Hungarian poor.

  It wasn’t romance with Auntie Mame, of that I’m certain, because only Dr. Whipple’s mother could have loved him. But it was reaction, and Auntie Mame’s reactions were just fine, thanks. Having run, sick with revulsion, from a Nazi culture in Austria, Auntie Mame ran just a little too far and ended up with Dr. Whipple. The next thing I knew, we were on a plane heading for Leningrad.

  Russia was very interesting for a visit, don’t think I’m trying to be blasé about it, but Auntie Mame was able to see it only through the eyes of Dr. Whipple.

  Leningrad, which used to be Petrograd or St. Petersburg, was just about as baroque as Peter the Great could make it. We stayed at the Astoria Hotel which, in its threadbare way, reminded me a little of the Plaza, inexplicably taken over by the management of a Bowery flophouse. We went to performances at the Mariinsky Theatre, which used to be the old Imperial Opera House, and made reverent tours of the Winter Palace, out of Peterhof and the palace of Peter the Great, to Eyetskoye-Selo for Catherine the Great’s place and quite a lot of other elaborate establishments that had once belonged to the rich and now were the property of just everybody.

  Auntie Mame had been thrilled by the happy lot of the Common People, not that she ever met any. “But simply everyone in Russia has a fur coat, my little love!” she cried. Since Auntie Mame was both nearsighted and In a New Phase, I hadn’t bothered to point out to her that all the fur coats looked like ruptured tom cat. Besides, it would have spoiled her pleasure in buying all those beautiful sable skins at the Leningrad fur trading market. In addition, she found some down and out old White Russians who sold her a rather decorative, though splintered, antique triptych and some very elegant Fabergé Easter eggs. Thus fulfilled in Leningrad, we were on our way to G.H.Q., Moscow.

  In 1937 Russia not only welcomed visitors from the West, the latch-string was a lassoo. I can see why. We put up at the Metropole Hotel, a hostelry that made the Astoria of Leningrad seem like Xanadu. There were no Louis-the-Whatever suites, just square, bleak rooms furnished in hard blue plush, a period I still think of as Stalin Standardized. Sagging balconies gave onto a bleak courtyard. There were private bathrooms, but in my own, I had to sit on the bathtub drain to keep the water from running out. There was no plug. But I knew it was pointless to mention this to Auntie Mame. She was In a New Phase, thanks to Dr. Whipple, and the Soviet could do no wrong, although, if any hotel in America had been just half as bad, she would have checked out before the bellboy had switched on the lights and opened the windows. I shared a room with Ito, her houseboy, who was terribly embarrassed and just couldn’t get used to calling me Comrade.

  But Auntie Mame loved it or said she did. With Dr. Whipple in command, she took Ito and me on endless tours of Moscow. Dr. Whipple had gotten out his soiled old Order of the Red Banner of Labor and, so honored, got us easily in to see such recherché sights as the new subway system; the taxidermy that was Lenin; a tractor factory; the Tretyakov Art Gallery; the Museum of the Revolution on Upper Gorky Street and the Sokolniki Park. It was all very interesting, but after a few views of public monuments, Ito and I were just as happy to go to the movies, where they showed double features, one film invariably a thrilling Soviet epic in which young Dmitri, head of the Konsomol, and his sweetheart, Sonia, go off happily into a red sunset on a new tractor; the other, and far more popular movie, was always something involving Shirley Temple.

  Ito and I had had our fill of Moscow when Auntie Mame came bounding into our room. “We’ve done it, we’ve done it, we’ve done it!” she cried.

  “Done what?” I asked, “got train tickets out of this place?”

  “No, dushka, no. We’re all going to Georgia!”

  “But Auntie Mame,” I said, “we’ve all been to Georgia and you hated it. Remember old Mrs. Burnside?”

  “Not that Georgia, dushka! The Georgia! Iberia! You know, darling where the Mdivani boys come from . . .”

  “Where I wish they’d go back to,” I said.

  “And that’s just where we’re going, my little love! Just outside Tiflis.”

  “Well, a few days of Tiflis, even syph’lis would look pretty good after . . .”

  “A few days? Ah dushka, how light you can be, carefree youth, when the whole course of your life is being re-routed.”

  “What in the name of God are you talking about?”

  “Hush, dushka, there isn’t any God.”

  “Be that as it may, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the most wonderful experiment ever conceived by mankind, the Mother Bloor Communal Farm (English speaking).”

  “The what?” I cried.

  “Oh, Patrick, my little love. This is it. This is the goal, the target, the bull’s eye of my whole empty life. All this wealth, this chi-chi, this dawdling about with wastrels who suck the blood of the workers in order to . . .”

  “Who do what? What have you been drinking?”

  “Only vodka with a beer chaser, like any good proletarian. Yes, my little love, Euclid, that’s Dr. Whipple, dushka, has shown me the way and that is the Mother Bloor Communal Farm (English speaking).”

  “Are you insane?” I asked.

  “No, dushka, but I have been. All of my life.
Yet now when we jolly comrades, English speaking, thank God, all get together down in Georgia; do everything together; live in complete independence of the Capitalistic world . . . Oh, my little love, I can’t even try to describe what it’s going to be . . .”

  “I’ll bet you can’t,” I said.

  “Exactly, Patrick love! Oh, the hand at the plow; the community loom; the people of all cultures, colors, classes learning, living, loving together . . .”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Oh dushka, if only you could have a good, long talk with Euclid, Dr. Whipple.”

  “I have had,” I said. “But what about getting back to America and college?”

  “College! Faugh! Why, Patrick, you’ll learn more on the Mother Bloor Communal Farm (English speaking) in four days than you could in four years of some tatty shut-away ivory tower. Oh, my little love, this is it. I’ve been such a fool for these forty . . . for ever so long. But this is so right for me, right, right, right! Euclid says . . .”

  “Did Dr. Whipple put you up to this?”

  “Euclid is a great leader and it is he, he and I, with the help of this wonderful, wonderful government, who will prove to the Doubting Thomases of the Capitalistic world that Anglo-Saxons can live richly and productively in peace and harmony in a culture of culture and pacifism that . . .”

  “Okay,” I said, knowing that this was just another storm to be weathered. “Just tell me what to do next.”

  “Oh, Patrick, dushka, I knew you’d be enthusiastic!” Auntie Mame hugged me and she smelled deliciously of Nuit de Noel. “Now you and Ito are simply to rush down to the Mother Bloor Communal Farm . . .”

  “English speaking,” I added patiently.

  “Exactly, my little love! And of course I know you won’t mind taking a few of my things with you. Well, you’re to get my rooms ready on this divine old Georgian farm and just give a hand to those who are already there. Dr. Whipple and I are to meet Stalin and Max . . .”

  “Who’s Max?” I asked.

  “Maxim Litvinov, naturally, dushka, and Micky Borodin, and I may just snoop around to see if Anna Louise Strong is in town . . .”

  “Do we drive there in the Rolls?” I asked.

  “Oh how like you! That school! That trust fund! That Mr. Babcock! Trying to mould your life to the Scarsdale pattern! Whatever decadence have they all taught you? That you and poor Comrade Ito should be riding in a Rolls-Royce, manufactured from the very blood of the British workers, while millions are hungry . . .”

  “What’s the matter, Auntie Mame? Hasn’t it got here yet? ”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, no. There’s been a little labor trouble on the railroad. You and Ito are to go by boat, then by train, then by bus. You’ll be met at Rostov and then . . .”

  “I see,” I said. “And just how much luggage of yours do we have to carry with us?”

  “Hardly anything, dushka. Just a trunk and two or three light hand pieces.”

  Ito and I set off with a pound of Halvah, Hugo’s Simplified Russian Grammar and Auntie Mame’s extra baggage. Ito spoke quite a lot of Japanese and some English. I spoke quite a lot of English, some French and four years of Latin (with pony). All told, we were a linguistic washout on our long, long trip South from Moscow to Georgia. Even so, we finally arrived at the Mother Bloor Communal Farm (English Speaking).

  Georgia is a very funny section of Russia. It’s way down south, as the name implies, and it’s also called Iberia, Caucasia and Armenia, as well as Georgia. Part of it borders the Black Sea, part the Caspian Sea, part Iran and part Turkey, if that’s any recommendation. It’s one of the oldest existing civilizations, if it can be called that and many of the structures are said to be more than twenty-five hundred years old. I believed it when I saw the Mother Bloor Communal Farm. However, it’s one of the prettiest, most clement sections of Russia, although very mountainous. It is also one of the most peaceful, or was in 1937, as both Stalin and his chum Beria were Georgians.

  I digress. The Mother Bloor Communal Farm was ten miles from a hamlet called Psplat, which was forty miles from a town called Lyuksemburgi, which was no distance at all from Tbilisi, or Tiflis. In other words, it was isolated. It had once been the datcha of a local bigwig who had been liquidated with Zinoviev, Kamenev and fifty-some other Trotsky sympathizers a year earlier. Unlike most of the Georgian limestone buildings nearby, the Mother Bloor Communal Farm was built of wood in a kind of turn-of-the-century fashion that reminded me of the tragedies of Chekov. It was a big, ungainly structure bristling with towers and turrets, cupolas and curlicues. Grimy mullion windows, dirty dormers and dim stained glass embrasures stared blindly out at us. The lawn looked as though it hadn’t been mowed since the Mongol Invasion. While the house was less than fifty, it seemed a lot older and creaked a lot more than some of the local buildings that were in their thousands. It had been discovered, naturally, by Dr. Whipple.

  Ito and I got out of the oxcart that had carried us on the last lap of our journey and dragged Auntie Mame’s baggage up the rutted, overgrown driveway toward the old house. The whole place had a haunted, funereal air, but there was a battered Fiat truck in the driveway. From inside the house I could hear hammering and a throaty voice singing “The Internationale.” Wearily we hoisted the luggage and ourselves to the rickety verandah and collapsed on the steps.

  The first person I saw was Natalie, a political science student from New York University, who called herself Natasha.

  “Hello,” I said, “Is my Aunt Mame here?”

  “Hello, Comrade,” Natalie-Natasha said heartily, “when did you turn up? Mame’s coming with the Convoy. They should be here any day now. Well, don’t just sit there. Come on, pitch in, lend a hand. We’ve all got to work together if the Experiment is going to amount to anything. Here, carry that stuff up to the third floor. It’s pretty well cleaned up by now and I think we’ll put you two up there. I suppose you’ve had lunch.”

  We hadn’t. Nor, for that matter, breakfast.

  I dragged my kit up the tortuous golden oak staircase and dumped it dispiritedly into a little round room up in top of a tower. It was awfully stuffy. All afternoon Ito and I swept and scrubbed and mopped the house’s incredible accumulation of filth. It was a big, gloomy old barracks and stifling. Natasha picked up a lot of lumpy old cots from somewhere, as well as some crates, folding chairs and sawhorse tables. There was also some quainty-dainty quasi-French furniture, presumably the chattels of the last owner, that had been set up in the Meeting Room. It looked as forlorn in the old mansion as I felt. I got a big splinter in my hand during that first day and Natasha snapped at me and said not to be so babyish and to stop complaining. My revenge, however, came a little while later when Natasha inadvertently punctured a wasp’s nest in the upstairs drawing room.

  It was nearly dark when she announced that we’d knock off work and eat. Natasha said she was on a diet so we’d just have a salad and something to drink. The salad was a gritty head of warm lettuce, unwashed and unadorned by dressing, salt or pepper. I drank some rusty-tasting water out of the kitchen tap.

  I didn’t sleep very well that night. The bed was hard and I could have sworn there were bugs in it. The room was suffocating. None of the windows would open. There were also a lot of scurrying noises inside the walls.

  The next day we had some stale bread for breakfast and then dug in again. By nightfall Ito and I had got most of the windows open and three of the toilets to flush. Then we scrubbed all of the parquet on the first floor and when we were finished, Natasha said that the place was just the kind of monument that a decadent, blood-sucking Trotskyite swine would build for himself.

  Dinner that evening was a silent affair. We ate beans and the rest of the bread. The house was quiet that night and so cool that I shivered under the scratchy old blanket on my cot. About two o’clock a terrible rainstorm started and I got out of bed to close the windows. I needn’t have bothered. Once open, none of them would budge. The roof sprang leaks in six di
fferent places and Ito and I spent the rest of the night emptying pots and pans of dirty rain water down the bathroom drains, which all proved to be hopelessly clogged.

  At eleven the next morning, a dilapidated old London bus chugged up the drive and stopped dead. A limp sign on its side read, “Mother Bloor Communal Farm.”

  “Well, Comrades, here we are!” I heard the glorious voice of Auntie Mame carol. “And isn’t it divine!”

  Ito and I rushed out to the lawn to greet her. “Dushka! Oh, darling, I bet you’ve been having the most heavenly time!” She kissed me vivaciously. Dr. Whipple got down from the bus and jovially waved a clenched fist at Ito and me. “Greetings, ah comrades,” he wheezed. “And, ah, here are your, ah, brothers!”

  One by one, our brothers descended limply from the old double-decker bus. There were about thirty in all. The group was mostly American and English with a Danish couple, three Canadians. (Dr. Whipple, in fact, called Montreal his home on the rare occasions when he was in it). There was a deserter from the Australian Army and three English-speaking Russians thrown in for good measure. The English contingent was made up of a bright-eyed young man from Oxford; two Liverpool dock workers; the black sheep (female) of a titled county family; and an anarchist who advocated lining up the English Royal Family and shooting them down, just as the Romanovs had been liquidated. He was considered rather extreme in his views.

  The United States had offered up an economics instructor from the Rand School; several unemployed garment workers; a brace of public school teachers; an assistant professor who had been asked to leave Williams; two girls from Bryn Mawr who talked like Katharine Hepburn; a recent Bennington graduate, who might have been quite pretty if she only hadn’t dressed like Raymond Duncan; a pair of shipwrecked merchant mariners; an intense young renegade priest from Holy Cross; a woman with a crew cut who taught handicrafts to Indians; a young interior decorator named Ralph who’d worked for Ruby Ross Wood “until he saw the light” as Auntie Mame put it; and an uneasy black couple named Johnson, who’d brought along two shy kids of around my age.

 

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