Republican Party Reptile Part 4

In fact, there was no one from The Nation on the cruise except one a.s.sistant editor in the book-review department. The excursion ad had run, I found out later, in large part because The Nation received a commission for each pa.s.senger it signed up. The ad had listed a number of other sponsors: Fellowship of Reconciliation, National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, Promoting Enduring Peace, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and World Fellowship League. A few pa.s.sengers in the other tour groups were from those organizations, but most seemed to be representing tiny peace organizations of their own. And if you didn't stick socks in their mouths right away, they'd tell you all about it.

First, however, a visit to Lenin's tomb. It's real dark and chilly in there, and you march around three sides of the gla.s.s case, and it's like a visit to the nocturnal-predators section at the Reptile House with your grade-school cla.s.s-no talking!

"He has the face of a poet," said our beautiful Intourist guide, Marya. He certainly does, a nasty, crazed, bigoted face just like Ezra Pound's.

None of the leftists so much as sniffled. This offended me. I can get quite misty at the Lincoln Monument. And I had to explain who John Reed was when we walked along the Kremlin wall. "Oh, that's right," said the orange-haired lady, "Warren Beatty in Reds." Today she wore earrings that looked like table lamps. "Isn't it wonderful?" she said, presenting Red Square as if she'd just knitted it. "No crowds!" The square was cordoned off by soldiers.

Back to the hotel for another big drink.

We spent the rest of the day on a Soviet version of a Gray Line tour, visiting at least thirty places of no interest. For the uninitiated, all Russian buildings look either like Grand Army of the Republic memorials or like low-income federal housing projects without graffiti. There are a few exceptions left over from the czars, but they need to have their lawns mowed. Every fifteen feet there's a monument-monuments to this, monuments to that, monuments to the Standing Committee of the Second National Congress of Gypsum and Chalk Workers, monuments to the Mothers of the Mothers of War Martyrs, monuments to the Inventor of Flexible Belt Drive. "In the foreground is a monument to the monument in the background," Marya narrated.- During a brief monument lacuna, Marya said, "Do any of you have questions that you would like to ask about the Soviet Union?"

"Where can I get a-" But the leftists beat me to it.

"What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?" asked one.

"What is the retirement age in the Soviet Union?" asked another.

"What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?"

"Is higher education free in the Soviet Union?"

"What about unemployment?"

Marya answered, pointed out a few more monuments, and asked, "Do any of you have other questions you would like to ask about the Soviet Union?"

Exactly the same person who'd asked the first question asked exactly the same question again. I thought I was hearing things. "What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?"

And that flipped the switch.

"What is the retirement age in the Soviet Union?"

"What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?"

"Is higher education free in the Soviet Union?"

Marya answered the questions again. The third time it happened she began to lose her composure. I could hear her filling up empty places in the sightseeing landscape. "Look, there's a building! And there's another! And over there are several buildings together! And here [sigh of relief] are many monuments."

All the time we were in Russia, at every opportunity, the questions began again, identical questions with identical wording. I'm proud to say I don't remember a single one of the answers. Except the one about unemployment: "There is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. The Soviet const.i.tution guarantees everyone a job." A pretty scary idea, I'd say.

Later in the trip, when I'd fled the bus tours and was wandering on my own, the lumpier kind of Russian would come up and ask me questions-not the "You are foreign?" sort of questions but rapid, involved questions in Russian. Perhaps because my hair was combed and I wore a necktie (two Soviet rarities) they thought I had special access to the comb-and-necktie store and must therefore be a privileged party official who knew what was what. I've wondered since if they were asking me, "What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?"

MONDAY, JULY 19.

One of the bus questioners stood next to me as we waited to board our flight to Rostov. She looked out at the various Aeroflot planes standing on the tarmac and managed a statement that was at once naive, gratuitous, patronizing, and filled with progressive ardor. "Airplanes!" she said. "The Soviet Union has thousands and thousands of airplanes!"

I never did find out what this lady looked like. She was only about four foot eleven, and all I ever saw was a skull top of hennaed hair with a blur of fast-moving jaw beneath it. She had that wonderful ability some older people have of letting her mind run right out her mouth.

"Well," she'd say, "here I am with my seat belt buckled up just sitting right here in the airplane seat and folding my hands in my lap and I'll move my feet over a little so they're on top of my flight bag and pull my coat up over my shoulders, whoops, I'm sitting right on it but I'll just wiggle around a little like this and pull it over my shoulders . . ." For hours, all the way to Rostov.

The peaceniks, especially the older peaceniks, were more visually interesting than the leftists. Somebody ought to tell a sixty-year-old man what he looks like in plastic sandals, running shorts, and a mint-green T-shirt with Kenneth Patchen plagiarisms silk-screened on the front.

The peaceniks were sillier-acting than the leftists too. There was a pair of Quaker ministers with us, man and wife. But they were not Quakers as one usually pictures them. They had "gone Hollywood." Imagine a Quaker who came up to you in the L.A. airport and tried to get a donation for a William Penn b.u.t.ton. Not that they did that, but it always looked to me as though they were about to. Anyway, this couple bore different last names. When we got aboard the ship in Rostov, a pa.s.senger went to return a book to the husband.

"I'm sorry," said the wife at their cabin door. "He's not here."

"But can't I give the book to you?" asked the pa.s.senger. "It belongs to your husband."

"We're not the same persons," said the wife.

My cabin mate was no leftist. "I'm not pro-Soviet," he said as he watched me unpack a necktie with little duck hunters all over it. "I'm a retired peace activist. I mean I'm not retired from peace activism-you know what I mean." He had spilled a bottle of Camphophenic in his luggage and had gastrointestinal trouble from the food and wouldn't use the air conditioning because it might give him a cold, so all the way to Kazan our cabin smelled like the bathroom at a Vick's factory. Three bus tours after we met he told me, "This country is just like a big club. Did you know there's no unemployment? The Soviet const.i.tution guarantees everyone a job!"

TUESDAY, JULY 20.

Fortunately there were other people to talk to. Actually, you couldn't talk to most of them because they were Russians and didn't speak English-what you might call a silent majority. On the plane to Rostov I'd sat next to a fellow named Ivor. He spoke only a bit of English but was a good mime. He got it across that he was an engineer. I got it across that I was an American. He seemed very pleased at that. I should come and stay with his family. I explained about the cruise boat, showing him a picture of it on the brochure. I did a charade to the effect that I'd better stick close to the boat. He gave me an engineering trade magazine (in Russian, no ill.u.s.trations), and I gave him some picture postcards of New York. We parted in a profusion of handshakes at the Rostov airport.

The boat stayed at the dock in Rostov until midnight Tuesday. They have plenty of monuments in Rostov, too, and tour buses were lined up on the quay. I could hear someone asking inside one of them, "What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?"

I was just being herded into that bus when someone grabbed my arm. It was Ivor. "Come on," he gestured. I escaped down the embankment. We got on a boat packed to the scuppers with Russians and went for a two-hour excursion on the Don. Ivor bought a bottle of champagne and began a labored explanation punctuated with hand-wavings and flurries of picture-drawing in my reporter's notebook.

His father had been on the front lines when the armies of the East and West had met in Germany in 1945. Apparently the Americans had liberated every bottle of alcoholic beverage between Omaha Beach and the Oder-Neisse Line and really made the welkin ring for their Red comrades in arms. "Anglish-poo," said Ivor, "Francis-poo," but the Americans, they were fine fellows, plenty of schnapps, plenty of cognac, plenty of vino for all. And they could drink, those American fine fellows. So Ivor's "vada" had made him promise (point to self, hand on heart) if (finger in air) Ivor ever met American (handshake, point to me) he must buy him much to drink. Da? (Toast, handshake, toast again, another handshake.) Standing behind Ivor was a giant man well into his sixties, a sort of combination Khrushchev and old Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was staring hard at me, c.o.c.king an ear to my foreign language. He wore an undershirt and a suit coat with a line of medals out across the breast pocket. "Deutsch?" he asked me sternly.

"Nyet deutsch," I said, "American."

He beamed, I mean just beamed. "Ally!" he said. It was his only English word. He pulled out a wallet with what I guess were commendations and an honorable discharge. "Amerikanskii ally!" he said and slapped my shoulder. Eight-ounce gla.s.ses of brandy must be bought for Ivor and me.

I toasted him with my only Russian word-"Tovarishch!" He brought forth a tiny grandson and had him shake hands with me.

"Now the little one can say he met an American," Ivor more or less explained. I toasted the big guy again. He pledged a long toast in return, and, as I understood Ivor's translation, we'd drunk to the hope that America and Russia would be allies again in a war against China.

I bought more cognac. Ivor bought beer. The big fellow bought even more cognac.

When the boat docked Ivor and I went to a beer hall, a bas.e.m.e.nt where they lined up half-liter mugs and squirted them full with a rubber hose from four feet away. Everyone grabbed half a dozen mugs at a time and drank one after the other while standing at long wooden tables. There was no communication problem now. We discussed women ("Ah, beautiful. Oh, much trouble"), international politics ("Iraq-poo. Iran-poo"), the relative merits of socialism versus a free-market system ("Socialism-enough responsible, nyet fun. Captialism-nyet enough responsible, plenty fun"), and, I think, literature ("And Quiet Flows the Don-poo, too long"). Then we went to another bar on top of a Russian tourist hotel and had even more to drink. I didn't want to let my side down. And there were Ivor's father's feelings to be considered.

Ivor and I embraced, and I staggered back to my stinking cabin to pa.s.s out. The woman with her brains between her teeth was standing at the top of the gangplank. "I hope you're not one of those people who's going to see the Soviet Union through the bottom of a vodka gla.s.s," she said.

THE ENEMY AMONG US.

Of course, we had plenty of Russians aboard the boat too. There were five of the advertised experts. I'll change their names in case some reconstructed quote or poetic exaggeration of mine is misconstrued to mean that one of these Soviets might be "turned" by the CIA. No one deserves to be pestered by surrept.i.tious Yalies who couldn't get into law school.

Two of the experts were really journalists. Natalia was a pleasant blond woman of about forty. She didn't have much to say. Nikolai was a st.u.r.dy guy in his mid-thirties, completely western in dress and manner. He had lived as a foreign correspondent in Switzerland and Austria for seven years, wore a bush jacket like any other foreign correspondent, and was as bluff and hard-drinking as any newspaper man. I gathered this wasn't much of an a.s.signment. Nikolai took no notes at the peace confabs, and Natalia took only a few.

A third expert, Orlonsky, was a sinister-looking type with a half-Russian, half-Tartar face and slitlike eyes. He turned out to be a bored economist from the Soviet Inst.i.tute of U.S. and Canadian Studies who was along to brush up on his English in preparation for some academic conference he was going to visit in San Francisco. The Inst.i.tute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the Village Voice for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America's rural areas. But Orlonsky seemed to be a look-alive fellow. He wanted to talk about America's marvelous demand-side goods-distribution system and did our Reagan administration economic inst.i.tutes have screws loose or what? Also, where did our automobile industry go? But the Americans wanted to talk about peace and Soviet-American relations.

Two more official-expert types were Dr. Bullshovich from the USSR Academy of Sciences Inst.i.tute of World Economy and International Relations and Professor Guvov from the department of philosophy and sociology at Moscow U. Dr. Bullshovich was a lean, dry character with a Jesuitical wit that was lost on his audience. Between formal peace activities he hid somewhere. Guvov was a doctrinaire buffoon who looked like a Hereford cow and was a big favorite with the leftists. "He is not a professor," one of the crew members told me later. "He is, you would call it, instructor. He should be teaching military schools."

Besides the experts there were thirty or more officers, sailors, waitresses, stewards, and cruise personnel. Some of the higher-ranking crew members spoke English but usually didn't let on. They preferred to stare blankly when the Americans began to complain. And the Americans did complain, the leftists worst of all. Between praise of the Soviet Union it was "It's too noisy, too rough, too breezy. The chair cushions are too hard. And what's that smell? This food is awful. Too greasy. Can't I order something else? I did order something else. Didn't someone say I could order something else? I'm sure I can order something else if I want to, and, young lady, the laundry lost one of my husband's socks. They're expensive socks and one of them is lost."

Translating the complaints, or pretending to, were a half-dozen Intourist guides. They began to have a haunted look before we were two days out of port.

VERY EARLY WEDNESDAY.

MORNING, JULY 21.

When I came to, after the Ivor expedition, I stumbled into the ship's bar. We'd cast off while I was asleep, and motion of the boat combined with motion of my gullet. I couldn't have looked well. Nikolai was sitting on a stool next to one of the Intourist guides, a dark, serious type named Sonya. I gripped the bar with both hands and tried to decide which of the impossible Russian soft drinks would be easiest to vomit. "You need vodka," said Nikolai, motioning to the barmaid. I drank the awful thing. "Now," said Nikolai, "how did you get that President Reagan?"

"I voted for him," I said. "How did you get Brezhnev?"

Nikolai began to laugh. "I do not have this great responsibility."

"How are you liking the Soviet Union?" asked Sonya.

"I'm not," I said.

She was worried. "No? What is the matter?"

"Too many Americans."

Sonya kept a look of strict neutrality.

"I have not met many Americans," said Nikolai. "They are all like this, no?" He made a gesture that encompa.s.sed the boat, winked, and ordered me another vodka.

"Not exactly," I said.

"Perhaps they are just old, a bit," said Sonya with the air of someone making an obviously fallacious argument. "But," she brightened, "they are for peace."

"Yes," I agreed. "They are progressive. They are highly progressive. They are such great progressives I think I have almost all of them talked into defecting."

"No, no, no, no, no," said Nikolai.

MUCH LATER WEDNESDAY.

MORNING, JULY 21.

We docked on a scruffy island somewhere up near Volgadonsk. One of the U.S. peace experts, a pacifist from the American Friends Service Committee, got up a volleyball game against the crew. "Now let's play and let's play hard," he told the American team. "But don't forget we're playing for fun." The Russians trounced them.

That night the Russians took me out onto the darkened fantail, where they had dozens of bottles of beer, cheese, bread, and a huge salted fish.

Sonya was concerned about my Republicanism. "You are not for peace?" she asked.

"I during Vietnam War struggle for peace very much [talk with the Russians for a while and you fall into it too], rioting for peace, fighting police for peace, tear-ga.s.sed for peace," I said. "I am tired of peace. Too dangerous."

Orlonsky began to laugh and then shook his head. "Vietnam-too bad."

"Land war in Asia," I said, "very bad. And some countries do not learn from an example." All of them laughed.

"And in Middle East," said Sonya, mirthfully pointing a finger at me, "some people's allies do not learn also."

"War is very bad," said Nikolai. "Maybe U.S. and Soviet Union go to war over Lebanon-ha, ha!" This seemed to be a hilarious idea. The Russians all but fell out of their chairs.

"With all of Middle East how do you pick only ally without oil?" said Orlonsky.