Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow (12 page)

‘Phew!' remarked Violet, ‘smells like people around 'ere don't wash very much.'

Ada poked her and said, ‘ 'Ush. It's a bit pongie but we're guests and it ain't perlite to pass comment on the personal 'abits of yer 'osts.'

Somewhere in the darkness there was a guard who whispered, ‘Ssssshhh!'

They found themselves in an underground chamber that appeared to be lit only by the glow emerging from the glass case of Lenin's transparent coffin.

‘Lor' luv ya,' said Mrs Butterfield
sotto voce
, ‘they 'aven't arf got 'im laid out.'

On the same note Mrs Harris said, ‘Just like my hubby when 'e passed on, in 'is best suit except I wouldn't let nobody look at 'im because he wouldn't
'ave liked it. “Shut the box,” I said to the undertaker and …'

Again came the warning, ‘Ssssshhh!'

They were now at the sarcophagus where they could pause and look down upon the extraordinary figure of the little man with the high brow and small pointed beard, clad in a black suit, his eyelids closed as if in sleep.

Mrs Butterfield, of course, had to say it, or rather sibilate it, since a loud voice in that catacomb would have been a sacrilege. ‘Don't 'e look natural?'

‘No, 'e don't,' replied Mrs Harris and felt a sudden sadness and pity gripping her heart. ‘He looks like 'e's from Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. In fact, the figure I saw of 'im there looked better.' And then Mrs Harris found she could not bear lingering there and her whisper was too audible as she said, ‘It's a rotten shyme. Why does 'e 'ave to be looked at by every Tom, Dick and 'Arry after 'e's dead and gone and can't 'elp 'imself? Why couldn't they give the little man a decent burial if they thought so much of 'im? Tarting 'im up and everyone staring down at 'im through the glass cover and 'im not bein' able to say so much as “bugger off”.'

She felt herself pushed from behind and a voice commanding, ‘Go please, move along.'

‘Narsty for the poor little feller,' was Ada's final comment as she did so.

Moscow, Mrs Harris was finding, was a constant
and rather exciting and often delightful series of prize packages like reaching into a bran tub. You never knew what you were going to get or what anything was going to be like. Driving through the streets where she was depressed by the drab, uniform, ill-cut clothing of the inhabitants, shapeless suits for men, sweaters, shawls and headscarves for the women, and even more dispirited by the sight of the old women in black, yes, and young ones too, sweeping the streets with brooms made of twigs like the witches rode in old-fashioned fairy tales. She did not fail to notice the big black saloon cars, chauffeur driven with well-padded men lounging comfortably in the back and in the bus she whispered to Mrs Butterfield, ‘Looks like some are more Communist than others around 'ere. They ain't no different from us. Women gets the dirty work.'

‘Someone's got to do it,' replied Mrs Butterfield philosophically.

In spite of the grandiose architecture and Russian gigantomania, new and old, Mrs Harris sniffed the sour aroma of universal poverty.

And then the next minute they were shuffling through the confines of the fabulous Kremlin museum, deep inside the red walls, called the Armoury and literally blinded by the glitter of the display of swords, scabbards, crowns, thrones, icons, Bibles, robes, turbans and head-gear, solid gold
encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, amethysts and rubies, copes embroidered with pearls, strings of pearls, chains of pearls, a crown blazing with twenty-five hundred diamonds, another covered with diamonds and emeralds, a sceptre and orb, shapeless with the rough setting of ancient rubies. Here was such wealth as defied the imagination, from the delicate Fabergé jewelled Easter eggs and miniature flowers to the imperial coaches glittering with gold paint, some of them literally houses on wheels. Icons were so encrusted with pearls and precious stones that they seemed to have lost all shape or meaning. Even the bridles, saddles and saddle bags of the long-defunct royal horses were thick with turquoise, gold filigree, lapis lazuli, topaz and diamonds.

The effect was staggering. The gems splintered into bouquets of stabbing flames of colour. Ada said, ‘Lor', Violet, makes our Crown Jewels in the Tower look like Woolworth's, don't it?'

Mrs Butterfield said, ‘I thought they was supposed to be poor over 'ere. 'Oo owns all this stuff?'

Mrs Harris replied, ‘I wouldn't know, but maybe if they sold it and divvied it up so everybody 'ad a share like they talk about there'd be enough for everyone to 'ave a decent suit of clothes and maybe get things workin' in the barfroom as well.'

The guide appeared at their elbow. She intoned, ‘These are the property of the People's Republic.'

A voice from the crowd said, ‘I thought you people had done away with all that stuff of the Czars.'

The guide said, ‘No more the Czars, but we show you examples of wonderful Russian workmanship.'

Ada and Violet found themselves transported to a drab hotel dining-room that reminded them of a railway station where they were served a grey and almost inedible meal by rude and surly waiters and waitresses who practically threw the dishes at them or disappeared completely into the kitchens for three-quarters of an hour at a time. From thence they were wafted to the Baroque splendours and warmth of the exquisite Bolshoi Theatre and the fairy tale ballet that blossomed on the stage.
The Sleeping Beauty
was being performed, but even here Ada was aware of the weird contrast between the audience, the square-bodied men and women who looked as though they had all been chiselled out of the same blocks of granite, the men in open necked shirts, the women with hardly a ribbon or a bit of finery to set off their colourless garments, and the grace, the beauty, the flowing, limpid motion on stage, the dancers in their glowing costumes and above all their slender figures and the ease with which they seemed to float through the air. While she could not put it into words, indeed for any foreigner to reconcile that these were the same people on either side of the proscenium arch,
Russians all, was difficult. Those beautiful, airy people had sprung Phoenix-like from the thick-set masses watching them.

Again they were taken from the open spaces of the city which, once one had left Red Square and the Kremlin area behind, consisted of grim, identical, harsh and undecorated blocks of flats and plunged into the subterranean palace of the underground stations of the famous Moscow subway system where each stop along the line was brightly decorated with statuary, paintings, bas reliefs, coloured tiling and mosaics mostly put together with a vulgarity of design coupled with a certain childish and innocent lavishness.

Mrs Butterfield said, ‘What's the good of all of this if they 'ide it away down under ground?', but Mrs Harris who was curiously beginning to get a feeling of these strange, incomprehensible people into whose midst she had been aviated, said, ‘Oh, I don't know, Vi, if we couldn't use a bit of this back 'ome. It wouldn't do any 'arm if we 'ad some life in our own tube stations.'

So interesting, exciting and novel was their prize package tour to Moscow turning out to be that the affair of Mr Lockwood and his lost lady love was beginning to dim and even the fact that their luggage had been searched and that a couple of tecs seemed obviously to be keeping a watch over them faded rather into the picture of what this marvellous
city and astonishing people were really like. If one took notice and observed constantly one could not escape the feeling that even the most ordinary citizens walking the streets or going about their daily work seemed to be looking over their shoulders as though any moment they expected the tap of the policeman's finger. It couldn't actually be so, Mrs Harris thought, that an entire nation was constantly under suspicion of being up to something, but the number of police, militia and obvious plainclothes operatives coupled with a furtive and half-guilty air of the citizens and their reluctance to say as much as half a dozen words to a stranger gave one the feeling that it might be so. Whatever, it was their business and none of hers as a foreigner and she even forgot about the letter once more crackling in a compartment of her handbag.

If there had been one total disappointment to the exciting trip neither Mrs Harris nor Violet had seen fit to mention it. This was the matter of Mrs Butterfield's fur coat. Ada kept quiet because up to that moment they had not seen so much as a glimmer of such an article on the horizon or anywhere else and Mrs Butterfield refrained from calling attention to it since as a lifelong pessimist she was thoroughly inured to disappointment and never expected anything important, exciting or greatly desired to happen to her.

The occasional furs they encountered on their
tour through the environs of Moscow were tattered, shabby and usually filthy garments to be seen on the backs of peasants from the northern regions. It wasn't wintertime anyway but the chilly nights brought out no more than rough cloth coats or series of shawls and cardigans. Not even of the most modest musquash, an inferior and less important rodent in the fur business, was there any sign, neither in the great Gum department store or the scattered shops. Fur hats peeled from some nondescript quadruped were seen worn by most Russian men and that was that.

There was gossip amongst the tour members that the Berjozka was stocked with treasures which could be bought with foreign currency. However, none of the members of this particular package tour having appeared to show any signs of the necessary affluence, no visit to this super emporium was scheduled. And also the tour was drawing to a close. They were due to go home the next day.

Ada Harris, who wished to make certain that there was actually nothing in the pelt line within her friend's reach, had asked whether they might be let off for a visit to this mart and an afternoon's shopping.

The reply from the guide had been a stern ‘Nyet. Impossible. It is not scheduled in this tour. Besides which, you would find the articles are far too expensive.'

Praxevna Lelechka had her orders. Never for a moment were either of the two women to be allowed out of sight. And so, with regret at the disappointment she had caused her friend, Ada was compelled to admit defeat. But this was before a telephone conversation which took place between Comrade Colonel Gregor Mihailovich Dugliev, Chief of Foreign Division Internal Security, and Vaslav Vornov, Inspector Foreign Division Internal Security, in which the Chief, having demanded a report on the activities of the two English women and having received it from his subordinate, gave Comrade Vornov seven different kinds of Russian hell and issued orders for an immediate change in the type of security clamped down upon the pair.

Translated, the exchange would have gone somewhat like this:

GREGOR MIHAILOVICH DUGLIEV: Comrade Inspector Vornov, have you a report upon the two English women spies, Harris and Butterfield?

INSPECTOR VORNOV: Right here before me, Comrade Chief.

DUGLIEV: Well?

VORNOV: Nothing. Outside of the regrettable incident in the room of the paper merchant from which time surveillance was increased there has not been so much as a fraction of a
second when they have not been with the group or under even heavier observation.

DUGLIEV: What do you mean when you say there has not been so much as a fraction of a second when they have not been with a group or under even heavier observation?

VORNOV: Exactly that, Comrade Gregor Mihailovich. The orders left no interpretation that from the instant they descended from the plane they were not to be given so much as a moment to themselves and the reports before me are complete from the time they arose until the …

DUGLIEV: Wait, wait. What is that you are saying? (Comrade Dugliev's voice had taken on the ominous basso notes of an impending thunderstorm.) Do you mean to tell me that this pair has never been permitted to be off by themselves, naturally thoroughly shadowed but so that we would have had the opportunity to arrest and interrogate them?

VORNOV: But Comrade, my orders were plain that they were to be handled under Regulation 12. Their effects have been searched. No codes or any suspicious articles have been found. All the electronic devices in their room are in working order. The medicament which induces talking in one's sleep has been administered during their
evening meal. The usual approaches for them to commit misdemeanours including an offer of a better rate of exchange of currency, illicit sales of spirits, pornographic publications, as well as bids to purchase some of their personal clothing and property at tempting prices, have been made. In view of the ah … ah … advanced ages of the suspects the sexual approach has been omitted and hence the operation of the concealed television cameras has seemed unnecessary, though of course we have a tape which shows they had no contraband of any kind hidden in their clothes. All illicit offers have been rejected out of hand. Every other moment of their presence is accounted for.

DUGLIEV: (The storm breaks.) Idiot! Fool! Imbecile! Clown! Dolt! Cretin! (And he followed with a number of Russian epithets too difficult for translation.) Do you not know that a Section A has been added to Regulation 12 that suspects on a package tour shall be given a half a day of freedom to be by themselves in order that they may have the opportunity of carrying out whatever their assignment might be so that at least an
agent provocateur
may plan some … Half-wit! Donkey! Numskull! Moron!

VORNOV: But Comrade, no such addition to the regulation has reached my desk. Otherwise …

DUGLIEV: Bungler! Nitwit! Oaf! You should have thought of it yourself as an officer of the KGB.

VORNOV: But Comrade Gregor Mihailovich, what would be the good? My report shows that these women are either too clever for us or innocent. As I told you they have resisted every effort we have made to tempt them. What good would a shopping tour do surrounded by the entire secret police?