In Washington Square Park, about four days ago, I met my first American friend. His name is Pat Wynne. He helps me to buy a hot dog. He is a police detective but quite educated, though working class—I should not say this about the workers, but it is true—and of the Roman Catholic faith.
I am not sure how to understand this man, who is so kind to me. He sees terrible things in his work. He is a homicide detective. There is melancholy. Surprised I have never seen a church. Shows me St Joseph’s.
We visit the Cedar Tavern, a place for artists, and for the first time I drink whisky and I like it very much. He asks many questions about socialism and the Soviet Union. He allows me to ask him anything. People discuss nuclear war and build private fallout shelters.
I am a bit like a character in a comic film, they say a fish out of water. I think they are surprised that we Soviets—Commies, as they call us—smile, and love American literature, and enjoy music, and even do magic tricks, as I did for some little children in the park on my way to New York University. They called me Max the Magician.
Sunny, I can never admit it to the Americans—it would be unpatriotic to say—but after Moscow’s gray deprivations, here it is as if somebody switched on the lights, and the world is all in bright colors.
If only I could know that you would read this, but you are no longer with us. It is nine years, 1953, since they sent you far away because you helped a friend, where you died in the cold, alone and sick. But I have never accepted this. I do not have to believe it. I pretend you are alive, and I write to you. I tell friends of this wonderful grandmother.
This man Ostalsky had been writing letters to his dead grandmother. I recalled suddenly that in the Cedar back in June, I had asked if his grandparents were alive. His grandfather was dead, he had told me. He had never answered my question about the woman he called Sunny. He had been writing to a dead woman.
I turned the pages of the notebook, tossed my cigarette butt into the toilet, and lit a fresh one. Some of the pages were filled with vocabulary and plenty of slang—Flipped out. Faked out. Get with it. On the make. Dope. Balling a chick. Jugs? Surfin’? Malarkey, Kvetch. Schlemiel. Gavone. Street names, notes for essays, food prices, magazines— he liked Life, Look, Esquire—flavors of ice cream, he liked toasted almond, and sandwiches, roast beef on a Kaiser roll with mayo. He had written down street names, and drawn little maps, cartoons really, of the area around his building, complete with stick figures.
Some of the entries were dated, but not all. His handwriting was very small, every line filled to the margins, as if he had been taught to save paper.
He had a knack for description, and he loved adjectives. The people he met were congenial, grumpy, humorous, wry, vain, pushy, arrogant, sometimes more than one, and no detail was too small, not even a girl with one brown eye and one blue, or one named Cherry with a big bust who wore a Woman’s Strike for Peace button and invited him for square dancing at Judson Memorial Church. He had written:
Dose doe, nice dancing, sympathetic people, but I cannot help thinking of Comrade Khrushchev and his wife so dancing.
June
My FBI tail is very young. I see him as soon as I land at the airport, he comes to Washington Square Park, waits near the building where I live. Pretends to hide behind newspaper. No evasion skills. He sticks out like, what do they say, a sore thumb. I pretend not to notice. Privately, I call him Ed. For J. Edgar Hoover. I have an urge to wave. This would no doubt confuse Ed.
Long ago I put away my desire to tell jokes, do tricks, play pranks—except with the close family—for they said when I was little, Ostalsky has no discipline. Here it returns. Pranks, jokes, magic tricks. Perhaps if I make them laugh, they will not believe that it is better to be dead than Red.
Here everyone cares for fun, or excitement, happiness, of course. Killing time is considered OK. Everyone here is a kid, bud, buddy, kiddo, son, boy, they call me this though I am a grown man of almost thirty. I hope this will help me in learning the culture and language to make me able to contribute more to the future of my country.
What I was reading was an alternative version of Ostalsky’s time in New York. His version. Restless, I hurried through more pages in the little book; I wanted something, some sign, something I could use on Max Ostalsky. Where was it?
June 23
Is rock and roll pornographic?
June 25
It is very hot. New clothes. Mrs Muriel Miller helps. My friend Pat Wynne always looks, as they say, sharp. Fine cotton chino trousers that are made in China and so are called chino, I think. Soft shirts with short sleeves for summer heat, blue, yellow, button-down collars. I shall become addicted to these clothes, though my mother thinks I am already vain. Window shopping is a pastime enjoyed by all New Yorkers.
I feel good, and like somebody else. In my new clothes, do I look like a clown? Like a man in a costume on a stage? My nice landlady, Mrs Muriel Miller, takes me shopping, and says I must call her Muriel. She feeds her Cocker Spaniel before we leave. His name is Cugi. “I just had to name the dog for him, I’m mad for Xavier Cugat, do they have the Cha Cha Cha in Russia, Max?
How colorful Muriel Miller’s New York looks, so prosperous, shiny, like a book for children. We ride the Fifth Avenue double deck bus, and from the top, I look down at people going to work, women in summer dresses, men in suits.
The crowds on Fifth Avenue coming in and out of office buildings, department stores, tea rooms. In Moscow, we do without so many things, but I keep this to myself. Of course, we fought hard, and withstood the terrible sieges. Americans do not understand this or that we want justice and peace as much as material goods.
Mrs Miller chatters, she is quite interested in politics, and says she feels quite liberal, having voted for JFK. Confesses as a Jew, it did worry her a little that a Catholic President might take orders from the Pope. Still respects Ike who won the war, though Mamie, his wife, was rumored to drink.
She asks many questions, about my family, my work, my hobbies, what I like to read. Sometimes in the evening I find sweets in my room. Mrs Miller leaves them for me. This is so she can examine my things, I imagine. These chocolate chip cookies she provides, the chocolates, like cheese in a mousetrap. I am the mouse.
Mr Stan Miller, her husband, is an advertising man on Madison Avenue, and asks if I would like to be a test subject. This means you go in a room with other people and say what you feel about a certain cigarette, or breakfast cereal or Old Spice, a deodorant product you put under your arms to conceal the odor of sweat. I think I must use this. American men smell of this, like ladies with a certain perfume. For this effort at the ad agency, you receive money. I spend it all on record albums, including Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.
Stan Miller seems a kind man. He inquires if I would care to drive his beloved Oldsmobile. He shows it to me, white, with a fold-down top—a convertible—and the interior in red leather. I say I can’t drive. He looks at me as if he now believes in my country transportation is only by donkey cart.
The American President wears no hat, he is young, slim and handsome, he speaks to people directly; he jokes with reporters; he seems entirely alive when he plays with his little children; his young wife is beautiful and speaks in her whispery seductive voice, and is very cultured. Everybody refers to him as JFK. They have charm. I watch them on TV. The English word is mesmerized. Enthralled, charmed, as if by a charm, a magic trick. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev is a fine leader, but his wife looks a peasant woman with shoes that seem to hurt her feet. Many Russians were embarrassed the day NK bangs his shoe on the table at the United Nations, or when he speaks of squeezing JFK’s balls over Berlin, as if he is telling dirty jokes in some village hall. NK is a good man, though. He has done wonderful things for our country. Without his desire for peace, I would not be in New York. Our men may not smell of perfume, but they are brave, and NK has been courageous, and I think of Yuri Gagarin, and how he just goes like a stroll in the park. When I am down in the dump—th
is means sad—I say to myself: “Poyekhali!!!”
This was the kind of stuff he had written in his first weeks in New York, first true things about America or JFK, then this idiotic automatic political speak, the kind of thing we assumed of Reds, Russkis, Bolsheviks, of these brainwashed people who had been fed propaganda with their cereal.
Gradually, the robotic Commie-speak began to disappear, and I had a faint sense of a man gradually leaving his country behind, as if he had boarded a boat and, not quite sure how it happened, had now sailed beyond the three-mile limit.
July 4
Independence Day. Coney Island for swimming on the beach, corn on the cob, pink cotton candy.
Rides. The Cyclone was a blast. Bounine accompanies me. I expected him, sooner or later. He remarks on certain young men with beautiful clothing. He has a taste for expensive things.
July 9
Pat Wynne, my friend who I see at university, or after a class, has been named as the detective by the news-papers in a terrible case of a young girl, last week, July, Independence Day, tortured and killed on the High Line, the freight railway near the Hudson River.
I ask about the case. He says little. We go to Minetta Tavern. I meet Nancy Rudnick. Miss Rudnick. Nancy. I want to look at her, and I know this is improper. I am a married man. She has short hair like Shirley MacLaine, my favorite American actress. She has blue eyes. Fine skin.
The next day she waits for me at the library, she says there is a party in Brooklyn Heights, gives me the address. I meet her there that night.
Son of a bitch. Her, too. She gets me to drive her to Brooklyn, doesn’t want me at the party because she says I’ll hate the music, and invites him. Ostalsky. All the time I spent with him. Christ.
Young people picket Woolworth store to protest for Civil Rights of Negroes who are not allowed to eat in their restaurants down south. Nancy invites me, but I only watch. They call out:
“Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. But Mary had another lamb whose fleece was very black, and everywhere that Mary went her lamb was turned right back.
One, two, three, four, don’t go into Woolworth’s Store.”
These young people are wonderful. I must learn some of their names.
July 29
Saul Rudnick and Nancy invite me for dinner for the second time. They are generous. Mr Rudnick—I must call him Saul—is ill, but a proud man, and he likes to hear my stories of my parents and grandparents, of the great days of the revolution, and the many characters involved. Pat has been there that afternoon. I know, but I keep it to myself. I saw Pat watching me from the coffee shop on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Charlton Street.
He knew. He saw everything. What was he?
I must try to find books for my uncle. He admires certain American military men such as General Patton and General Curtis LeMay, General MacArthur, men he admires, for he says they are, in their country, patriots.
August 5
The Village Voice prints an interview about me. People congratulate me on the article. I worry that this may attract too much attention to me from Moscow.
Even Mr Pugliese who cuts my hair on Sullivan Street hangs the picture on the wall. Next to Frank Sinatra, the Pope, JFK, Jesus. I am up there with Jesus. What would my superiors think? Mr Pugliese tells me his wife is an Italian socialist, and was a firebrand in her girlhood, sticking up for Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. He says there is always a room for me at their place, over the barber shop, that I must eat Beatrice’s veal one night.
Bounine visits me in the Village often in July, in August, too. He says we are real pals. I am not so sure of this. He knows many things about my family. He pretends he knew nothing of me before the flight. I know he has an obligation to watch me. He is a physicist. But I am sure he is also an agent. Bounine invites me to visit Columbia University. We meet at the statue of Alexander Hamilton. “The father of American capitalism,” Bounine says. “Do you think he is pointing to the future?” In Bounine’s room, I see he has very expensive tastes. His new phonograph, his record albums, his new suit, shoes, sweaters. Where does a medical researcher find so much money?
He tells me he finds my stories of Pat Wynne intriguing and would like to meet him.
We discuss Cuba. We discuss American jokes. Bounine questions me about my taste in films, and he pretends this is simply casual conversation, but I know. I know this is a cross-examination.
I tell him I will always prefer our films, which are serious and important, or certain American films with a correct social purpose, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, or perhaps an older film I saw, Twelve Angry Men. I tell him I read my Theodore Dreiser and Tom Paine in my classes, when I prefer F.Scott Fitzgerald.
I do not tell him that. Oh, have I learned the culture! I have become a man who prefers the films of Billy Wilder to the films of Sergei Eisenstein. I love The Apartment, and best Some Like It Hot. I go to a film house where they show revivals, and watch it three times. The next time somebody asks if we only have donkey carts in our country, I say, “Nobody’s perfect.”
Museum of Modern Art, Guernica
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guggenheim Museum I would like to run down and down its galleries in a spiral.
Marilyn Monroe is dead, and people mourn her.
August 12
Mr Stan Miller invites me to dinner at the Luchow Restaurant on 14th Street. It is all dark wood, and German food, and very delicious. Sauerbraten. Heavy beer. He is proud of his son, but more of his nephew who is in the Air Force, and shows me the picture of this young guy in uniform, so young he is like a chicken just hatched, and tells me of the wonderful benefits of fighting for the United States. I realize that Mr Miller is probing gently, like a doctor, to see if I might come over. I think he considers this as if I would give up my favorite Moscow team for his Yankees.
Does he mean for me to defect? He speaks of vigilance. Collusion. Informants. Hints a second time I can defect.
Did Mr Miller request for a Soviet exchange student to stay at the apartment? I feel uncomfortable here, but what can I do about it? Does he believe I will defect for a white Oldsmobile car?
He is naive. He feels I enjoy myself so much in New York, that I would betray my country, its system, its goals.
Dear Sunny,
I feel so homesick. Out of the blue, this comes on me. I want to write to my Nina, but I know she will not reply. She never writes.
I must know more about Pat’s case. The young woman was Cuban, perhaps a counter-revolutionary. I know this from the tattoo. It was in all the papers last week. Bounine asks me to find out more about this case. The worm. The words: Cuba Libre. Pat shows me the warehouse where the girl hid out, above the railroad tracks. He is uneasy doing this, and leaves quickly. I continue to look around, though it is raining.
Village Vanguard.
Nancy. Slim red dress, a pearl necklace, high heels. Club crowded. Thick smoke. I tell her I will write it all down to remember. She asks if I have a good memory, and I tell her yes, I have trained it to be so. She looks at me in a strange way, but then we are inside.
Miles Davis arrives. I feel the adoration in the crowd.
He plays. Even with his back to the audience, he has magic. Here, in person, I never heard anything so beautiful, long notes that go on and on, sweet, melancholy, almost unearthly in my ears. “So What?” “Summertime”. The set ends.
Nancy knows Mr Gordon who owns the club. He introduces us to Miles. “So you’re from Russia, man. Welcome anytime, man.” He tells the other musicians “This cat must be a black Russian.”
Never have I been so close before to a genius. Miles asks about Moscow. He asks about jazz music. I tell him I heard Benny Goodman in person.
Miles shakes my hand, climbs to the bandstand with his guys, and very soft, so nobody else hears it, blows some few bars of “Moscow Nights”.
Did I dream this?
“W
hat do you feel, Max?” Nancy says after.
I tell her I feel I am some sort of Neanderthal who arrived in this land of civilized Homo Sapiens, like The Inheritors, this sad wonderful book by William Golding. This is how Miles’s music makes me feel.
August 15
Wherever I go, there is so much music. Music in clubs, bars, streets, radios in cafes, beaches, and building sites. Gerdes. Blue Note. Half Note. Five Spot. The Town Hall. Charles Mingus. “Eat that chicken.” I like the folk music, the singers such as Josh White, Joan Baez. Peter Paul and Mary, though Nancy says they are not quite authentic. I don’t care. Gerde’s Folk City.
Pat Wynne invites me to the Brooklyn Fox for a rock and roll show, and everyone dancing in the aisles to this music that makes them feel free. I am uneasy with Pat. I think that he likes Nancy very much, although I asked him once, and he said they were merely friends. But he is not the same. He drinks more. His conversation is more cynical.
I am under siege by music. Rock and roll. Alive. Wild. This music is changing me. Ray Charles. Little Richard. John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk. And, oh, Ella Fitzgerald. I listen for hours and hours. Rock and roll people and jazz people do not like each other, but I love it all. My obedient Soviet soul is being sucked out by Ella, if there was a thing such as souls. This sucking noise is coming from me. How will I go back?
Mrs Miller invited me to ask some friends to dinner, and when Pat asked me who else was coming, I said only a friend from Moscow. I knew he was thinking of Nancy. I must put this to an end. I will write to Nina tomorrow.
I remembered that evening. The weather had been hot, still August, but cool at the Millers who had an air conditioner in the living-room window. By then, I was already pretty jealous of Max and Nancy, but I was curious to get a look at his room.
Mr Miller opens the door, and shows me into the living room where his wife is playing Swan Lake on the piano, and she does it well, with style and feeling, sitting straight on the piano bench in her green cocktail dress made of raw silk—it had been a present from Thailand, she had said—pearls around her neck, dark hair newly done, fingers flying across the keys, so her diamond rings flash.
Manhattan 62 Page 12