Long Made Short (2 page)

After we all have dinner at the hotel restaurant and Svetlana leaves I say to Marguerite
“Did you see the way she made those last-minute sandwiches? I mean, she got a free
meal—I’m not begrudging her it, since it was cheap enough and she wasn’t too intrusive
at the table and I had enough wine in me to ward her off when she was. And I know
there’s a shortage of dairy stuff in Moscow. But Jesus, have some self-respect and
maybe consideration for us, since this is our hotel, and don’t stuff the rest of the
table bread into your bag and fill the two slices of bread left on your plate with
a quarter pound of butter and wrap that up for home too. I shouldn’t be saying all
this, right? since I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“It’s that you forget. She asked our permission first. She’s giving the butter to
an old woman in her building who can’t get any and the bread I guess she figures the
woman will like also or else just that the kitchen will throw it away. But suppose
she was drying the bread for herself and hoarding the butter for a day when she won’t
have any, like tomorrow perhaps? So what.”

“Okay, fair. But also, when she talks to us I kind of get upset”—“You get very upset”—“I
get a little less than that upset that she keeps me out entirely, and it’s in English.
When I do say something when you’re around she often looks at me as if I were a kid
who’s barged in when he’s been warned not to, as if this is adult conversation only
so buzz off. You’re the big genius and intellectual toiler she’s saying—after all,
it’s your project we’ve come here for. I’m just a stupid site-gazer—didn’t know Red
Square wasn’t inside the Kremlin—but at least I was honest enough to admit it. Doesn’t
know the difference between the Tver—that the way to say it?—and Novgorod Russian
icon schools. Why should I know? Who does but an art expert of that period or field
or someone who has few books to choose from in libraries and stores but all the time
in the world to read? But credit me with a little intelligence and conversational
interest or skills or whatever you want to call it. Someone who can on occasion talk
with some knowledge and depth about the less poppy and mundane things. For instance,
also credit me with—but nothing, when at the Pushkin, seeing me standing there staring
at the Van Goghs for a few minutes, she asks me do I like them. ‘You bet,’ I said,
which is what I usually say in front of Van Goghs, for what am I going to do when
I’m still in a state of enthrallment, go into every crack, dab, dot and corner? But
she gives me the French expression about each to his own taste or gut and then starts
in with this pro-Monet and-Cézanne and anti-Vincent treatiselike argument or lecture
I could hardly understand it was so over my head, or else she didn’t know how to deliver
it clearly and succinctly in English. But how these three Van Goghs all on the same
wall are critically puffed up by unscrupulous experts, dealers and museums so people—like
me, I’m sure she’s saying—who know little to zero about art and artistry will pay
fifty million bucks apiece for. My point is she thinks I’m uncultured, or barely cultured—certainly
not intelligent. A walking talking absurdity when you think this shmuck also teaches
at a university. Even if it were phys ed or home ec I taught—still, he represents
the academy so should be much smarter, know several languages backwards, be able to
communicate without hesitation and with full intellectual rigor and appropriate ornate
words what he knows, sees and likes instead of being someone who probably always needs
a thesaurus when he writes and talks. The typical example of the stereotyped American
tourist she’s shown around Moscow or just interpreted for before. Except of course
you—ah, the intelligentsia. And those rare nonacademic people like the ones in Boston
who gave you her name—fancy journalists, magazines—but so cultivated she kept telling
me: educated, eloquent, polyglottal—at least the guy—worldly and well read and with
even an executed Decembrist count way back in his family. Because I’ve no advanced
degrees or easy time with the spoken language and have little political feeling or
at least nothing much to say about it for either of our countries, she thinks I’ve
no mind of my own and so have to have everything explained.”

“It can’t be all that bad and she has a wonderful itinerary for you tomorrow. The
Tolstoi Museum, a farmers’ market or two where you can get me some cracked walnuts
and real Russian honey and anything that looks unusual there as gifts and will travel
well for home. And the Andronikov monastery”—“Great, more icons”—“Don’t go if you
don’t want, but also for its ancient tiny church and onion domes. And the G.U.M. department
store to buy records for a quarter and a znachki shop there with the largest selection
of them in the city. To impress her, pronounce the store ‘Goom.’” “Goom, Goom.” “Then
step in with her someplace, get a taste of a workers’ restaurant or café—she knows
it all, and maybe over food alone you’ll get to know and appreciate each other better.
Anyway, she’ll show you the ropes, how to use the trolley and pay phone and to shop
without being cheated and show your dollars without getting mugged. By the time she’s
through with you, you’ll be exhausted but have a map of the city in your head. Then
you have a day off and she from you. It’s for me too you’ll be doing this. I’ll be
too busy to go shopping even one afternoon. And though I’ve seen most of it before
you can tell me what you saw and also take pictures to show me and the kids later
on.”

Svetlana shows up on the dot next morning. We see things by foot, trolley, metro,
occasional cab for a five-dollar bill Marguerite was told to bring about twenty of
to Moscow for just something like this. Svetlana says once “Am I talking too much?”
She is but I say “Nope.” “I’ve tendencies towards talk, possibly for being sequestered
in my slight space the rest of the days and the one woman I see most to take care
of doesn’t say three words a time. But I’m an honest person, you’re visiting a culture
where honest persons with words is almost a belief, so you want to be an honest person
too, don’t you? Tell me to my face if I’m twisting your ears as the English like to
say, and perhaps the Americans too, or showing you too many things too fast to digest.”
“No no, I mean it, everything couldn’t be better, thanks.”

I don’t want to be with her for lunch so I say I think I’m still suffering from jet
lag and would like a nap at my hotel, would she mind eating alone? I give her money
for the first-floor café, go upstairs and lie on my bed and drink coffee and read,
she rings from the lobby an hour later. More places and constant information and chatter.
“Are you sure I’m not talking too much?” “Why, do you think you are?” “Well, I might
be.” “No, absolutely not, it’s all fine.” Every monument and theater and famous person’s
birth or living place and also every building we pass by foot, trolley and cab that
looks interesting architecturally or stands out because of its size she has something
to say about. “That so? Yes, hmm, so this is where it is, I didn’t know that.”

We meet Marguerite for dinner at a Georgian restaurant she had to make reservations
for two days ago, and in the cab back to our hotel we drop Svetlana off at a metro
station. She hands us each several candies. “Special, hard to get because individually
wrapped and the ingredients very select. They’re made by an acquaintance of mine in
the Kremlin’s confectionary kitchen and often given in droves to dignitaries and diplomats.
We ought to export them simply for their colorful wrappers. Bears and squirrels—children
would love them.” “That’s very kind, thank you,” I say. “I don’t eat candy myself
but will definitely try one, though not now because I’m too full, and save the rest
for my girls.” Marguerite’s told her tomorrow will be a paid day off and asks if she’d
like the first three days’ pay now. “All at once, please. I wouldn’t want to ride
the metro with it. Too much in dollars and one of our now many clever Moscow thieves
might see it on my face.” “And on the fifth day?” I say. “Will he see it on my face
you mean? No, since that day I’ll hire a taxicab or continue with yours, flush like
an American tourist or spending as freely as one. But because I’m Russian, all for
the sum or extra one of a dollar, and then hide the money in my room for one of your
rainy days. That is yours?” “Ours and probably the English’s too.”

Later I say to Marguerite “Know why she wants all her wages at once?” “Something disparaging,
I suppose.” “No, just conjecture born out of insight or something. Because she thinks
we’ll have to give her a bigger tip for the whole fifty than if we only gave her her
last day’s pay on Friday. She’s a shrewdie all right, and even shrewder how well she
disguises it.” “Disguises what?” “Everything. Or just things—some. Holding back—being
extra gracious to me when we’re alone when I know damn well what she thinks of me
intellectually, or maybe just culturally—we’ve spoken of it. And this not wanting
her pay day by day because of the increment, the incremental—because with more…well,
you know—or maybe I’m being far-fetched on this. But other things.” “That’s what I’m
asking, what? Did she ever do or say anything in particular to make you question her
motives this way?” “As I said, just little things I’ve picked up but nothing right
now, other than what I’ve mentioned, that comes to mind.” “Well I think you’re way
way off about her. She’s a touch sad but decent, and energetic and enthusiastic. And
I only wish I had the time to be taken around by such a knowledgeable person who knows
the city so well, even if she is so garrulous, and you were the one doing the bookwork
all day. Actually, I think you’d like that more.” “No, I’m enjoying my rest away from
work. And true, I suppose I should feel lucky having her for so little money. But
the greater truth is I feel luckier being on my own tomorrow. Anyway, not to change
the subject, I was thinking just now: ‘
da
,
da
‘—what a nice soft way to say yes.”

But to move along. She doesn’t call Wednesday morning as she said she would to find
out what time she should come Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her and she doesn’t
answer. She doesn’t call Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her every fifteen minutes,
thinking maybe she was out all night, slept at a friend’s—has a secret life she never
gave us a clue about, she says—or got in after midnight last night, when Marguerite
stopped calling, and didn’t call us after that because she felt it was too late, and
was up and out for groceries or something early this morning. We leave the phone off
the hook—each room has its own number, so it’s all direct—when we go to the hotel
restaurant for our complimentary breakfast. Marguerite calls when we get back, then
asks me to stick around an hour more before going out on my own if that’s what I plan
to do. “When she was outside she might have had trouble getting a pay phone or misplaced
our number or didn’t have the two kopecks on her and nobody could give her change—anything,
and she just got hold of a phone. If you want, which you probably won’t, call every
fifteen minutes or so—she might have just got home. But I’m a little worried about
her, aren’t you?” and I say “Of course, it doesn’t seem like her, but I’m sure it’s
nothing,” and she leaves for her appointment. I wait but don’t call, figuring if she
just got home first thing she’d do would be to call. I leave after an hour, walk around
the old section of the city, try to find some buildings in
War and Peace
Marguerite said are still supposed to be here—the Rostovs’ mansion, Pierre’s house—but
can’t find the streets, even though they’re on my map, and no one, if they’re hearing
me right and understanding the few Russian words Marguerite taught me yesterday to
make myself understood in something like this, seems to have heard of them; stop in
a café for
“odin kofe
,
mineralenaya voda
and
dva bulka”
—woman shakes her head—
“bulki
,
bulka
, two,” holding up two fingers and then pointing to some rolls on the counter behind
her,
“mais
—but not sweet ones,
nyet sakhar
,
pzhalesta,”
and she gives me mineral water and coffee without the lump of sugar that usually
comes with it and takes enough change out of my palm to pay for it while I’m trying
to find in it what amount I think she said.

Marguerite calls Svetlana before we go to the hotel restaurant for dinner, calls when
we get back to our room. “I’m really worried now,” she says, “I know something’s wrong.
We know she isn’t the type to promise to come—to say she’ll call the night before
to see precisely what hour we want her—and then just to disappear. And with that stroke
she had two years ago—” “Oh yeah, that’s right, the stroke, I forgot. So what do we
do?” She calls a scholar she met the other day who said he knows of Svetlana but he
only has her phone number, not her address, and doesn’t know anyone who does; but
he’ll make some calls. “Even if we had her address,” I say, “what would we do with
it? She told me it’s about an hour’s metro ride to her stop—lots of changes and at
the end of the line. Or a couple of changes, but anyway, ‘couple’ meaning what to
her—two, three, four? We’d go out there at this hour when people all over the city
are getting bumped on the head and robbed? Even by cab—or of course by cab if we could
get one or one would take us that far—we’d be sure he’d wait? If he didn’t we’d be
screwed.” “Not that. But say we found someone who knows her and lives near her? Or
someone who doesn’t but as a favor to us might want to help her. Maybe that person
could phone a friend and go over—two men. Or just you and him. What I’m saying is
Russians still do that, put themselves out for strangers, especially one intellectual
for another. And if this person didn’t want to do it but lived fairly close to her,
which would mean you wouldn’t go because he couldn’t come in for you and then go back
there and so on, I’d say we’d pay the fare—cab, anything. And would a carton of Marlboros—a
few weeks’ salary for some at the regular exchange—encourage a friend of his to go
along with him? Meaning, would it encourage
him?
But I’ve seen the way they’ve helped me. With leads, contacts, books, unpublished
papers and notes and tapes very few American scholars would let me see and hear and
copy down. And accompanying me clear across town for something and then waiting there
while I worked or saw someone so they could take me back here.”