The Russian Century

by George Pahomov

  I decided I must go out of Moscow and think it over. So I went out to a Government Home of Rest for newspaper people, musicians and artists and I ask Robert not to come there, but anyway he did. He came every day with a box of chocolates on the only train from Moscow that took three and a half hours to make the trip, spent fifty minutes with me on the station platform, and then went back on the only train returning to Moscow. I was certainly very much impressed.

  Of course, I couldn’t ask him to spend the night in this Home of Rest because he was a foreigner. It would be the biggest scandal ever happen at this Home of Rest to have a foreigner inside of it. This fact helped me realize that our marriage will never work. I am so proud of him. Such an educated man he is and such new horizons he opened for me, but I will always be afraid to ask him in a Russian house or to ask him to meet my Russian friends. I will always be in terror that the militia will come and arrest me and then what will he do? So I say to Robert, no, and go back to Moscow.

  Then in 1937 we start to hear about new arrests in Russia. Mostly they are arresting the wives of men who were counterrevolutionists; the men who had opposed the rise of Stalin. This struck terror to my heart for of course Karel [her executed husband] was one of these counterrevolutionists. For more than a year now he had been dead; but I felt sure his fight against Stalin was not forgotten.

  How right I was! One day I came home and my landlady in real Russian fashion, like I’m already dead, clasps her hands in front of her and sways from side to side and says the militia man had been there. He had come with the summons for me to appear on a certain date at the regional headquarters.

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  I knew, of course, what it means. This was the new technique: instead of arresting you he just left the summons for you to go to the militia where you will be given the place of your exile. What a sadness I felt! I thought I am finished as a human being. I will never come back from the militia station.

  I telephoned Robert and told him I must see him at once. When we meet he knows by my face what has happened and he at once begs me to marry him. “Your only chance is to marry me immediately,” he argues. “If it save you, wonderful. If not, you go to exile and I go to America.” By this time Robert had got his visa extended for six months and was writing free-lance stories for United States newspapers and magazines.

  The next morning Robert took his passport and I took mine and we went to the marriage office. There were no flowers, no wedding dress, no nothing. Everything was frozen in me. I still didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do, but Robert kept saying, “Oh, darling, cheer up! We’re going to be married.”

  Now they change the marriage office completely, but when Robert and I were married, there were only two windows there—one was for deaths and births and one was for marriages and divorces. The ceremony takes you ten minutes. “Passports,” the man say, and click, click, it’s finished. He fills in the names, the dates of birth, stamps the passports and gives you a certificate of marriage and that’s all. No witnesses needed. Nothing. We paid him three rubles and left. A marriage certificate is the cheapest thing you can buy in Russia.

  Robert says, “Let’s drink champagne,” and so we went to the Cafe National the most fanciest, the most expensive cafe in Russia. It’s the only place you can order apple pie a la mode. And Robert say, “Now don’t argue; you are my wife now and we’re going to have champagne and little cakes.”

  I had champagne and little cakes and I was throwing out all night. Happily for the bridegroom, he was not with me then. We had no place to be together. It was five months before we lived as man and wife and then we lived in one room that Gordon Kashin, an American correspondent, let us have in his three-room apartment.

  But back to the summons from the militia. When the day came, Robert walked with me to the headquarters building and wanted to go into the office, but I said, “No, better not. If they arrest us both, who will fight?” Poor Robert, he was hurt by the Communists, I feel sure, more than most other foreigners, for he came so close to the bureaucracy and cruelty of the system. You know, you sometime read in books, the hero went pale. Well, I never saw anybody so pale in my life as Robert. He was gray-pale. Even his lips were pale. My heart wrings now when I think about it. I don’t know how I looked, but I was certain I’d never see Robert again. Only God knows how horribly I felt.

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  We held both hands and kissed. Then I opened the door and the steps went up and I thought I’d never climb there. My feet were like stones when I moved them. I came to this smelly office and I showed my summons to a man sitting there. He said, “Sit down and wait. You will be called.”

  Then I saw four more woman sitting there and by the expressions on their faces I knew they went through the same nightmare I did. I wanted to go down and tell Robert there is a line there and I got up, but the man say with such a roughness, “Sit down and wait your turn.”

  All the woman was called before I was and what impressed me most was when a woman was called, she went into the next office and never come back, and so it was completely clear for me she is arrested and taken inside to prison.

  Finally the man call, “Nila Ivanovna Shevko,” and I get up and go to the other office where they give me a long questionnaire. They ask your last name, your Christian name, your date of birth and your birthplace, your husband’s name and his occupation and so on.

  Of course, they thought they knew my husband’s name and that he was already dead, so can imagine with what circumstances I wrote, “Robert Magid-off, American correspondent.” Then I handed in this questionnaire and in spite of my terror, I waited with devilish pleasure for the man to get to this piece of surprising information.

  Ah, it was a comedy! He took the questionnaire with the boring look, for every day hundreds of people are arrested and fill these things out. Then suddenly his hair stand on end and I enjoy myself immensely. I know that even if this marriage to Robert will not save me, the NKVD will be most unpleasantly shocked to see I have an American husband working for foreign newspapers. I understand very well that at this time they don’t want an American to come so close to the real Russian life.

  Then he jump from his chair and say, “Will you please sit down?”

  I say nothing, but sit down very deliberately.

  He disappears into the chief’s office and in about three minutes he returns and say most politely, “Will you come back in a week? In the meantime you will sign this paper that you will not leave Moscow until after the second interview.”

  The week seemed interminable, but when I returned I was received immediately by the chief officer and he say, “The most horrible thing has happened. It’s all a terrible, terrible mistake your being asked to come here.” And he takes the summons with my name written on it and tears it in little pieces. “I most humbly apologize for such a stupid blunder.”

  “You mean I’m free?” I say, scarcely able to believe my ears.

  He laugh like an amateur on the stage, ‘Ho, ho, ho,” and say, “Of course. Of course. You can travel where you wish—that is inside the Soviet Union. And I do hope you will try to explain to your husband it was all a mistake.”

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  “I will do my best,” I say in the meanest way. “He is downstairs now, waiting for me.”

  As I went out, the man in the other office, who spoke so rough to me the first time, run and open the door, but God! I didn’t even notice him.

  On the street just where I left him, Robert is standing, and I run to him and put my arms around him and cry, “I’m free! I’m free! I can go any place!”

  After this, especially after we get the room with Gordon Kashin, is the most happiest time. It was the first time anybody take care of me. You American woman will not understand this for you are accustomed to the husband taking care of the woman, being sorry for you when you have the headache, ge
tting a wrap for you when you are cold, asking when he comes home in the evening, “Darling, what have you being doing with yourself today?” and inviting you out for special suppers now and then; you know, showing the attention in all these little things. Well, I never experienced it before and I just bask in it with such a pleasure. It was pure and untouched happiness.

  Then Robert became assistant to the chief of the AP Bureau in Moscow and went to the United States for a short visit. While he was gone I was telephoned to from the Russian Foreign Office, where we I had applied for an apartment for a long time, that they had an apartment for us. I thought, of course, it would be a room and a bathroom, but my God, it was three rooms. I sent Robert a cable, “We got apartment,” and in just two weeks he came rushing back with boxes loaded with things because the apartment was completely empty except for the most necessary furniture.

  Robert had bought dishes and silver and the most terrific kitchen things— the things to turn the eggs, the pot to make the coffee, the beater to beat the eggs and frying things. Oh, to unpack it! Nothing will ever compare with unpacking these boxes. Never before did Robert like to shop, but he tell me that every time he bought something, even the can opener, he saw my happy face. There was only one disappointment. Robert has very plain taste and he bought very plain dishes. I want them all colors with big flowers.

  The best thing he bought was the electric toaster with the pumping bread. Wonderful is not the word! I telephoned all my Russian friends—by this time the arrests and trials had subsided—and I said to them, “Please do come for American toast!” I ask husbands too. Everybody. When they came I put the toaster on an oval table in the middle of the room. I put two pieces of bread in it and then everybody sat around and waited.

  Then z-zh-ip the toast pumped up! Ah-h-h, there is no way to express my friends’ faces; their childish happiness at this miracle thing. Then I buttered the two slices and passed them around and here we went again. Everybody waited, scarcely breathing. Then z-zh-ip and two more slices. I’m really afraid to say how much we ate of this amazing American toast. It sounds un-

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  believable; but we spent the whole evening around this toaster and everybody eat five or six slices—about ten pounds of bread in all.

  I remember I wore for the toasting a housecoat with a zipper that was going from the knee up to the neck, which Robert had also brought from America. I had never seen a zipper like this before and, naturally, none of my Russian friends had. Robert said the coat was just to wear around the house when there was no company but I thought it was absolutely beautiful—it was long to the floor with a little train in back. The guests simply adored the zipper. Poor souls, they were so fascinated with the zipper zipping and the toast pumping they were in a state of complete exhaustion by the time they went home.

  Robert felt I should go around with Americans more. When we went ice skating and saw Americans, he would bring me up to them and introduce me as his wife. Soon one of these couples invited us to dinner.

  I’ll never forget this dinner. I was in a frenzy about what to wear, and I drove Robert into a frenzy too. Do I wear a hat? I asked him. Do I wear gloves? How long should my dress be? What color? He begged me to stop worrying. They are kind people, he said, and they know you’re a simple Russian peasant.

  So we came to the party and they passed the martinis and I took one and that was the first cocktail I ever had in my life. In Russia it is not customary to drink before dinner. In an ordinary home everybody just sits and tries to squeeze the conversation and then everybody will be invited to the table and will drink vodka with the food.

  So here I am drinking the martini and everybody talking to me in English how difficult is the Russian language and I not understanding scarcely a word. When Robert was courting me he said he would give me some English lessons and he did, but the day we were married, he dropped the lessons dead—not one more lesson. I suppose I was not a very inspiring pupil.

  As we drink and talk, a man in a white coat passes a lot of little things to eat—all very nice, but never before have I seen such little things—one bite. and z-zh-ip they’re gone. So I whisper to Robert, “Shall I eat a lot of these little things or will there be something else?”

  Then the man in the white coat came and said dinner is served and we got up and went into the dining room. The hostess put me on the right of the host but I did not appreciate the gesture for I was not acquainted with this compliment.

  Do you know, before we ate a thing, the man in the white coat took off the plate that was already on the table and put another plate and a bowl with soup in its place? Then he pass the crackers and celery and olives and all those things. This was all easy, but when the second course came I was just ruined.

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  For the first time in my life I was served a platter of meat. I was served it even before the hostess because of this damned honor of sitting on the right of the host, so I could not watch her and see what to do. I thought I would just die.

  The most I was afraid of was the servants. They were all Russians and the Russians are the most class-conscious of any people. They know I don’t belong at this fancy dinner and they scorn me like I can’t tell you. They really snobbed me. I was all the time like sitting on pins and needles. Poor Robert, he suffered too. He knows how serious I take these things. After the meat came the vegetables. Oh, my back was a hard nut of tense!

  Finally, the servants took off everything and I thought thank God! it is over; but then came this last thing, the dessert. It was some kind of ring, a quite fat ring, with a sauce in the middle. I understand now I was supposed to cut a little piece of this one and then take sauce from the inside’ but I cut all the way through this ring and the sauce rushed out and ran all around the platter.

  Quickly, the servant jerked it away from me and stomped out of the room, his head high in the air and his eyes looking down his nose. I was so furious I could have struck him between the eyes. Fortunately for the other guests there was a second ring in the kitchen, and in a few minutes he returned with it, but he never approached within three feet of me.

  After this torture—I really can’t call it another way—we went back to the living room for coffee. When some time had passed I began once more to enjoy the beautiful life.

  I must tell you from that night on I learned pretty fast the American ways. I didn’t know a lot of things. You just can’t imagine. American children learn them like they breathe, but nobody ever told me how to do all kinds of things: how to unfold your napkin (you know, the first dinner I had at Gordon Kashin’s apartment I didn’t use mine at all; I thought it would be terrible to soil its white innocence and I looked at Robert for approval, but afterwards he told me it was put there to use); how to hold your knife and fork; how to serve yourself from a platter.

  Robert, of course, noticed when I married him that I didn’t know these things; but he was so kind and gentle he wouldn’t mention them. Now, though, when I insisted on knowing, he told me many things: not to reach across the table for something you wanted, not to eat chicken with your fingers at a formal dinner and so on.

  The most complicated thing for me to learn was how to serve myself, so one day I fried a whole chicken and Robert, with a napkin on his hand, just like the man in the white coat, served it on a platter to me. He did it very seriously, not cracking a smile. Then he made me eat what I took with a knife and fork. I tell you it was real work, trying to finish this chicken without doing it naturally with the fingers.

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  So life went on until June 22nd, 1941, when we heard on the radio that Germany had invaded Russia. Soon after that many Americans sent their wives back to the United States and Robert was most anxious to send me. However, he couldn’t get permission from the Russian government. He had applied for a visa for me soon after we were married.
Then every six months he wrote a letter and asked has the decision yet been made; but like the real Russian bureaucracy, they never said no and they never said yes. They just said they had taken it under consideration and that Robert would be informed when the time came. We were both terribly afraid, of course, that they would never give the permission for me to go.

  The war finally broke the stalemate. The American ambassador, Lawrence Steinhardt, called Robert one day and said, “I think I have good news for you. I think we have succeeded in getting permission for Nila to go to the United States. We have arranged with the Russians to exchange her and Pauline Habicht for two loads of high octane gas.” Pauline was the wife of Herman Habicht, the assistant chief of the United Press bureau.

  That was all Ambassador Steinhardt told Robert and for many years Robert bragged that he was one of two men who knew exactly what his wife was worth—one load of high octane gas. Thirteen years later he and I learned that Pauline and I and several other people were exchanged not for gas but for a prominent Russian who was being detained in the United States.

  Anyway, the morning after the ambassador telephoned, I got a call from the Moscow bureau that gives visas and they invited me to come there. When I arrived they say the visa is granted, but they must warn me that I must renounce my Russian citizenship. This was no more than I expected. Nevertheless, it was a terrible wrench. I was never a member of the Communist party and God knows I had suffered at the hands of the Communist regime; still I loved my country, my family and my friends, and it hurt me to turn my back upon them.