The Charm School (15 page)

Hollis noticed that most of the patrons were glancing at them. Hollis asked, “Is this place safe?”

“I guess.”

“This doesn’t appear to be a government-owned restaurant.”

“It’s a catering establishment. Almost a private club. It’s owned and operated by an Azerbaijanian produce cooperative. It’s legal.”

“Okay.”

“Have you ever eaten in a catering co-op?”

“No.”

“The food is better than in the best restaurants. Especially the co-ops with access to fresh produce such as this one.”

“Okay.”

A young boy came to the table and set down a bowl of small white grapes and another bowl of tangerines.

Lisa said, “See? When was the last time you saw a tangerine?”

“In a dream last week.” Hollis took a sharp knife and peeled a tangerine. He pulled the sections apart, and he and Lisa ate in silence, picking at the sweet white grapes between bites of tangerine. Lisa said, “Do you believe this?”

“You saved me from scurvy.”

Lisa wiped her mouth with her handkerchief as there were no napkins. “All the Azerbaijanians who live in Moscow come here. The food is genuinely ethnic.”

Hollis nodded. In Moscow’s other so-called ethnic restaurants, the Prague, the Berlin, the Bucharest, and the Budapest, the food was distinctly Russian. And in the Havana the only thing Cuban was the sugar on the table. The Peking served borscht. He asked, “How did you find this place?”

“Long story.”

Hollis thought it could be told in one word:
Seth.

She said, “We’re allowed to patronize these places. Most Westerners don’t know about them, or if they do, won’t eat in them.”

“Can’t guess why.”

“Do you smell those spices?”

“Sort of. But the tobacco smoke is filled with air.”

Lisa sat back and lit her own cigarette. “Restaurants,” she said, “are a sort of barometer of what is wrong with this country.”

“How is that?”

“I mean there are eight million Muscovites, and half of them are trying to get reservations in the twenty passable restaurants.”

“Seating is tight,” Hollis agreed. “But they may be holding our table at the Prague.”

“You see, if private individuals were allowed to open restaurants, five hundred would spring up overnight. Same with shops and everything else.”

“That would be a threat to the system.”

“What sort of threat?”

“A very formidable threat. It would be like lighting a candle in the dark. Everyone would converge on it and light their own candles from it. Then the dimly perceived flaws in the system would be seen. Then who knows what would happen.”

Lisa studied him for a moment before observing, “You’re rather profound for a military man.”

“I thank you, I think. Read any good Gogol lately?”

She smiled. “Actually, I’m a great fan of his. Have you read
Dead Souls
?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“He’s not that widely read in the West, and I think that’s because his characters are hard to appreciate outside a Russian context. Don’t you think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“Gogol’s statue is actually at the end of this street, you know. In the Arbat Square. Have you seen it?”

“Hard to miss it.”

The plum wine came, and Lisa poured. Hollis touched glasses with her and toasted. “As the peasants say, ‘To a short winter, ample meat, and dry wood for the fire.’”

“You forgot the last line.”

“Yes. ‘And a warm woman for my bed.’”

They drank.

Lisa looked at him over the rim of her glass. She asked, “Sam, where are you from originally?”

“All over. I’m an Air Force brat.”

“Is this going to be like pulling teeth?”

He smiled. “All right, let me tell you about myself. I was born at Travis Air Force Base during the Second World War. I moved all over the globe until I was eighteen. Then I spent four years at the Air Force Academy. I graduated and went on to fighter school. I did a tour in ’Nam in 1968, then another in 1972. That’s when I was shot down over Haiphong. I got the craft out to sea, bailed out, and was picked up by air-sea rescue. I was banged up a bit, and the flight surgeons said no more flying. My father was a brigadier general by this time and got me a temporary posting in the Pentagon until I was able to be more active. Somehow I wound up taking a language course in Bulgarian. As you might know, Bulgarian is the root Slavic language, sort of like Latin is to the Romance languages. So anyway, I did three years in Sofia as an air attaché, then did stints in a couple of other Warsaw Pact countries, then before I knew it, I was too involved with this business for them to let me go back to the line.” Hollis took a drink of his wine. “I always suspected my father was behind this embassy attaché business.”

“So you’re a reluctant spy.”

“No, not reluctant. But not enthusiastic either. Just sort of . . . I don’t know. And I’m not a spy.”

“Okay. And then about two years ago, they sent you here. The big leagues.”

“The only league in this business.”

“And how about your family?”

“My father retired some years ago. He and my mother live in Japan. I’m not sure why. They’re rather odd. I think they’re into Zen. Too much traveling around. They don’t even know America, and what they know they don’t like. Reminds me of the Roman centurions or British colonial officers. You know? Since World War Two, America has developed a whole class of people like that.”

“Like us.”

“Yes, like us. The emissaries of empire.”

“Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“A younger sister who married a jet jockey and is currently living in the Philippines. No children. One older brother who works on Wall Street, wears a yellow tie, and makes too much money. He’s married, two children. He’s the only real American in the family.” Hollis smiled. “He developed travel burnout as a kid after the fifteenth transfer. His philosophy is that a man should never leave his time zone.”

“Time zone?”

“Yes. You know. He lives in the Eastern time zone. He won’t leave it and in fact confines himself to twenty degrees of latitude within the zone. He’ll cross zip codes freely but tries to stay within his telephone area code. He’s in two one two.”

Lisa stifled a laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“What an interesting family. Are you all close?”

“There is a bond. How about you? Tell me about Lisa.”

She gave no indication of having heard him and said, “I seem to remember a wife.”

“Wife? Oh, yes, Katherine. She went to London to shop.”

“I think she’s been gone about half a year.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Are you legally separated?”

“Illegally.”

Lisa seemed about to pursue this but poured more wine instead.

The proprietress came to the table, and she and Lisa discussed the day’s fare. Lisa ordered for both herself and Hollis. Lisa said to Hollis, “It’s a fixed price. Only three rubles. The menu changes by the hour. Better that than the big restaurants where they keep telling you they’re out of everything you order.” She tore a piece of pita bread and put half of it on his plate. She remarked, “Bulgarian? I thought your Russian was odd. I don’t mean American-accented or anything, but not Russian-accented either.”

“I speak a little Polish too.”

“You’ve been around the Bloc.” She laughed at her own pun.

Hollis smiled. “It’s an article of faith with the Russians that only a Russian can speak
Russian
Russian. Yet Seth Alevy is nearly perfect. If he were trying to pass, a Muscovite would think he was probably a Leningrader and vice versa.”

“Perhaps on the telephone. But there’s more to being a Russian than the language. It’s like that with any nationality, but the Russians
are
different in unique ways. Did you ever notice that Russian men walk from the shoulders down? American men use their legs.”

“I’ve noticed.”

She continued, “And their facial expressions are different, their mannerisms. To be a Russian is the sum total of the national and cultural experience. Neither you nor I nor Seth could pass for a Russian any more than we could pass for an Oriental.”

“I detect some Russian mysticism there, Ms. Putyatova.”

Lisa smiled.

Hollis said, “Yet I wonder if it could be done? I mean, given the right training, cultural immersion, and so forth, could an American pass for a Russian in a group of Russians? Could a Russian pass for an American at a backyard barbecue?”

Lisa thought a moment before replying. “Perhaps for a while, if no one was looking for a counterfeit. But not under close examination. Something would betray the person.”

“Would it? What if a Russian who already knew English went to a special school? A school with an American instructor? A sort of . . . finishing school? A total immersion in Americana for, let’s say, a year or more. Would you get a perfect copy of the American instructor?”

Lisa considered a moment, then replied, “The instructor and the student would have to be very dedicated. . . . There would have to be a very good reason for an American to go along with that—” She added, “We’re talking about spies, aren’t we?”

“You are. I’m not. You’re very bright.” Hollis changed the subject. “Your Russian is grammatically perfect. Your colloquialisms are good. But I noticed your accent, rhythm, and speech patterns are not Muscovite, nor do you sound as if you learned Russian at Monterey or Wiesbaden.”

“No, I didn’t go to our language schools. My grandmother taught me Russian.”

“Evelina Vasileva Putyatova?”

“So, you were paying attention. Odd for a man.”

“I’m a spy. I listen.”

“And look and file things away. Anyway, my grandmother was a wonderful woman.” Lisa stubbed out her cigarette and continued, “I was born and raised in Sea Cliff, a neat sort of village of Victorian houses on Long Island’s north shore. Sea Cliff has a large Russian community that goes back to czarist times. Then the Revolution and civil war brought a second wave of immigrants, among whom were my grandmother and grandfather. They were in their early twenties and recently married. My grandfather’s father was a czarist officer, and he was killed fighting the Germans, so my grandfather, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Putyatov, inherited the estate and title, which by this time had become a distinct liability. My grandmother’s parents had already been arrested by the local Bolsheviks and shot, and Mikhail’s mother, my great-grandmother, shot herself. Relatives on both sides of the family were scattered all over Russia or were at the front or already in exile. So sensing the party was over, Mikhail and Evelina grabbed the jewels and the gold and got out. They didn’t arrive in America broke. Anyway, Mikhail and Evelina wound up in Sea Cliff, a long way from the Volga.”

“And your grandmother told you all this?”

“Yes. Russians are perhaps the last of the Europeans to put so much emphasis on oral history. In a country where there has always been censorship, who can you go to for the facts if not the old people?

“They’re not always the most reliable witnesses to the past.”

“Perhaps not in the sense of the larger issues. But they can tell you who was hanged for hoarding food and who was shot for owning land.”

“Yes, that’s true. Go on.”

“Well, in the parlor of our nice old Victorian house in Sea Cliff, we had a silver samovar, and when I was a child, Evelina would sit me by the samovar and tell me Russian folktales, then when I got older, about her life on her parents’ estate and about my grandfather. When I was about sixteen, she told me about the Revolution, the civil war, the epidemics, and the famine. It affected me very deeply, but I suppose her stories were colored by her hate of the communists, and I suppose, too, that I was influenced by her hate, though I don’t know if that was her purpose.”

Hollis made no comment.

Lisa continued, “But she taught me love, too, love of old Russia, the people, the language, the Orthodox church. . . .” Lisa stared off into space for a few seconds, then continued, “In my grandmother’s room there were three beautiful icons on the wall and a curio cabinet that held folk art and miniature portraits on porcelain of her family and of Nicholas and Alexandra. The atmosphere in our community, even as late as when I grew up, was vaguely anticommunist—anti-Bolshevik, I suppose you’d say. There is a Russian Orthodox church close by, and ironically the Soviet mission to the United Nations has an old estate that they use as a weekend retreat a few miles from the church. Sundays my grandmother and I would go to church, and sometimes we’d walk with the priests and the congregation to the gates of the Soviet estate and pray. Our Holy Saturday candlelight procession would always march past the Soviet place. Today we’d call that a demonstration. Then, we called it bringing light to the anti-Christs. So you see, Sam, Evelina Vasileva Putyatova had a deep and lasting influence on me. She died when I was away at college.”

Neither spoke for some time, then Lisa said, “I went to the University of Virginia and got my degree in Soviet studies. I took the Foreign Service Entrance Exam, went through the oral assessment, the background investigation, and was vetted for a top secret clearance. I placed high on the USIS list but had to wait a year for an appointment. I did my year of consular service in Medan, Indonesia. There were six of us in a run-down two-story house, and I couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to do to further American interests there. Mostly we drank beer and played cards. I almost went nuts. Then I got my first real USIS job at the American library in Madras, India, and spent two years there. Then I came back to Washington for a year of extra training and staff work with the USIS in D.C. Then off to East Berlin for two years, where I finally used my Russian. That was a good embassy—exciting, mysterious, spies all over the place, and a ten-minute car ride to the West. After Berlin, I finally got what I wanted. Moscow. And here I am. With another spy.”

“You like spies.”

“I’m a spy groupie.”

Hollis smiled.

She added, “I’ve never married and never been engaged. I’m turning twenty-nine next month.”

“Invite me to your office birthday party.”