The Charm School (21 page)

“Oh, yes. Major Dodson is still out there somewhere with Gregory Fisher’s rubles and maps.”

“That’s right. And if Dodson makes it to the embassy, which is where I suppose he’s heading,” Hollis added, “then tons of shit will hit the fan and splatter everything from here to Washington. We’ll all be home in a week, leaving the night porter as chargé d’affaires.”

Lisa didn’t respond.

Three kilometers out of town, Hollis and Lisa spotted the huge wooden sign set on two poles over the entrance road to the
sovkhoz
—the state farm. Beneath the name of the
sovkhoz
was the inspirational message:
We will strive to meet the quotas of the Central Committee.

Lisa said, “Well, pardner, welcome to the Lazy Red Revolution October Ranch.”

Hollis managed a smile and turned into the gravel road, then proceeded toward the state farm. They could make out a large group of stark wooden farm buildings, corrugated metal sheds, and a three-story concrete building that Hollis took to be the commune, which housed the salaried workers of the state farms and their families, the single and transient workers, and the technicians, all under one roof. There were individual sitting rooms and bedrooms in the apartments, but the kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms were communal. It seemed to Hollis that there was something of
Brave New World
in those prefab apartment blocks rising out of the farmland, something unnatural about people who worked the soil having no yard and garden of their own, climbing stairs to their apartment.

Lisa looked back and announced, “I see the Chaika’s headlights turning onto this road . . . he just killed his lights.”

Hollis drove on past the commune and spotted the small brick structure that Burov told them was the administration building. There was a single light in one window. Hollis shut off his headlights, drove past the building, and continued on.

Lisa said, “You think it’s a setup?”

“Quite possibly.”

“What are we going to do now?”

Hollis replied, “Our little Zhiguli didn’t have much chance on the main road, but back here on the farm lanes we can give the Chaika a run.”

“Is this another itinerary violation?”

“Quite possibly.” There was not much available light, but Hollis could pick out the dirt and gravel road from the surrounding fields of the famous Russian black earth. Hollis sped up, hitting the brake whenever he saw an intersecting lane and turning onto it. Without brake lights or headlights the Zhiguli was virtually invisible, and after fifteen minutes of random turnings Hollis announced, “We’ve lost the Chaika. Unfortunately
we’re
lost.”

“No kidding?”

“Did you notice any Holiday Inns back there?”

“Way back. Like two years and ten thousand miles back. Say, Sam, you really know how to show a girl a good time. Let
me
buy lunch next time. Okay?”

“I’m glad you’ve maintained your sense of humor, Miss Rhodes, as vapid as it may be. Well, better lost than dead, I say. I think we’ll pull into a tractor shed and wait until dawn.”

Lisa shut off the car heater and rolled down her window. “It’s nearly freezing, and it’s only nine o’clock.”

“It
is
a bit nippy. Do you have long johns?”

“We have to find shelter, Sam.” She thought a moment, then said, “I think we’re off that state farm by now. If we can find a
kolhoz
—a collective farm village—we can get a peasant to take us in for a few rubles, no questions asked.”

“No questions asked? In Russia?”

“A collective is different from a state farm. In a collective village you’ll see Russian peasant hospitality. I’d trust them to keep quiet.”

“You’ve never even
been
in the countryside. How do you know the peasants are friendly?”

“Instinct.”

“Too many nineteenth-century Russian novels, I think.” He shrugged. “All right. I’ll trust you on this.” He added, “You get your wish to see a village sooner than we thought.”

The road had gone from gravel to dirt and was deeply rutted by farm vehicles. They drove on in a westward direction and within fifteen minutes saw the silhouettes of utility poles against the horizon. They followed the poles and came to the first
izba
of a small hamlet. Hollis slowed the car on the dirt track that ran between two rows of log cabins. He said, “I don’t see any lights.”

Lisa replied, “It’s past nine, Sam. They’re in bed. They’re peasants. This is not Moscow.”

“True. In Moscow they turn in at ten.” Hollis stopped the car and looked out the window. “I think we turned left into the last century.” He shut off the engine, and they listened to the dead silence. Hollis got out of the car and scanned the narrow lane. Like most of rural Russia, this village boasted electricity, but Hollis saw no sign of telephone lines nor was there a vehicle in sight or a structure large enough to hold one. There was no evidence that the village even possessed a single horse. It was nicely isolated. Lisa came up beside him, and Hollis said, “They don’t show
this
place to the foreign dignitaries.”

A light went on in the front window of an
izba,
then a few more lights came on. The door of a cabin opened, and a man stepped out onto a dirt path. Hollis said to Lisa, “You talk.”

The man approached, and Hollis could see he was somewhere between forty and sixty, wore felt boot-liners, and had probably dressed hastily.

Lisa said in Russian, “Greetings. We are American tourists.”

The man didn’t reply. A few other doors opened, and more people came out into the dirt lane.

Hollis looked around. There were about ten
izbas
on each side of the road, and behind them Hollis could see pigpens and chicken coops. Each kitchen garden was fenced in, and in the corner of each was an outhouse. Ten meters down the lane was a single well and next to it a hand pump. The whole place had a look of extreme neglect about it and made the villages outside of Moscow look prosperous by comparison.

A crowd of about fifty people—men, women, and children—were standing around Hollis, Lisa, and the Zhiguli now. Hollis said to Lisa in English, “Tell them we come from Earth with a message of peace and to take us to their
vozhd.
”

She gave him a look of both annoyance and anxiety, then said to the man who had come out first, “We have having car trouble. Can you put us up for the night?”

The peasants looked from one to another, but amazingly, Hollis thought, there was no sound from them. Finally the peasant she addressed said, “You wish lodgings? Here?”

“Yes.”

“There is a state farm not far from here. They will have lodgings now that the harvest is done.”

Hollis replied, “I don’t think the car will make it. Do you have a telephone or vehicle?”

“No. But I can send a boy on a bicycle.”

“Don’t go to that trouble,” Hollis said with a politeness that seemed to surprise the man. Hollis added, “My wife and I would rather stay with the people.” At the word
narod
—the common people, the masses—the man smiled.

Hollis looked closely at the peasants around him. They were coarse people with leathery skin the color of the earth on which they stood. Their clothes were little more than rags, their quilted
vatniks
not so clean or tailored as Lisa’s. The men were unshaven, and the women had that unusual Russian combination of fat bodies and drawn faces. Half their teeth were black or missing, and from where Hollis stood, he could smell the sour clothes mixed with various flavored vodkas.
My God,
he thought,
this can’t be.

Lisa said to Hollis in English, “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Want to leave?”

“Too late.” He said to the man, “You must let us pay you for our lodgings.”

The man shook his head. “No, no. But I will sell you some butter and lettuce, and you can make a nice profit on that in Moscow.”

“Thank you.” Hollis added, “I’ll put the car where it won’t block the road.” He said to Lisa, “Get acquainted.” Hollis got in the car and backed it down the lane until he came to a hayrick he’d seen. He pulled the Zhiguli out of sight of the road, took his briefcase, and got out. He walked back, where he found Lisa involved in a ten-way conversation. Lisa said to Hollis in English, “Our host is named Pavel Pedorovich, and this is his wife Ida Agaryova. Everyone is very impressed with our Russian.”

“Did you tell them you are Countess Putyatova and you might own them?”

“Don’t be an ass, Sam.”

“Okay.”

“Also I’ve learned that this place is called Yablonya—apple tree—and is a hamlet of the large collective farm named Krasnya Plamenny—Red Flame. The collective’s administrative center is about five kilometers further west. No one lives there, but there is a telephone in the tractor storage shed. Mechanics will be there in the morning and will let us use the telephone.”

“Very good. I’m promoting you to captain.” Hollis introduced himself as Joe Smith. “Call me Iosif.”

Pavel introduced each of the twenty or so families in the village, including his own son Mikhail, a boy of about sixteen, and his daughter Zina, who was a year or so older. They all smiled as they were introduced, and some of the old ones even removed their hats in a low sweeping bow, the ancient Russian peasant gesture of respect. Hollis wanted to get off the road in the event a black Chaika happened by. He said to Pavel, “My wife is tired.”

“Yes, yes. Follow me.” He led Hollis and Lisa toward his
izba,
and Hollis noted that neither Pavel nor his wife inquired about luggage. This could mean they knew he and Lisa were on the run, or perhaps they thought his briefcase was luggage.

They entered the front room of the
izba,
which was the kitchen. There was a wood stove for heating and cooking, around which were a half dozen pairs of felt boots. A pine table and chairs sat in the corner, and utensils hung on the log walls. Against the far wall leaned two muddy bicycles. Incongruously there was a refrigerator plugged into an overhead socket from which dangled a single bare lightbulb. On a second table between the stove and the refrigerator sat a washtub filled with dirty dishes. Hollis noticed an open barrel of kasha—buckwheat—on the floor and remembered a peasant rhyme:

Shci da kasha;

Pishcha nasha.

—Cabbage soup and gruel are our food.

Pavel pulled two chairs out. “Sit. Sit.”

Hollis and Lisa sat.

Pavel barked at his wife, “Vodka. Cups.”

The door opened, and a man and woman entered with a teenage girl and a younger boy. The woman set a bowl of cut cucumbers on the table and backed away with the children. The man sat very close to Hollis and smiled. Another family entered, and the scene was repeated. Soon the walls were lined with women, their heavy arms folded across their chests like Siamese servants ready to snap to if anyone called. The children sat on the floor at the women’s feet. Ida gave some of the children
kisel
—a thick drink made with pear juice and potato flour. The men, about fifteen of them now, sat around or near the table on chairs that the children had carried in. Vodka was flowing, and someone produced an Armenian brandy. Everyone drank out of cracked and not-too-clean teacups. The table was now covered with
zakuski
—the Russian equivalent of cocktail food—mostly sliced vegetables, a bowl of boiled eggs, and salted fish. Hollis downed his second vodka and said to Lisa in English, “Does this mean we have to have them for cocktails?”

Lisa looked at him and said with emotion, “I love this. This is an incredible experience.”

Hollis thought a moment. “Indeed, it is.” He held out his cup, and it was immediately filled with pepper vodka. There was not much talking, Hollis noted, mostly requests to pass a bowl or a bottle of this or that. The stench of the people around him had been overpowering, but with his fourth vodka he seemed not to notice or care. “That’s why they drink.”

“Why?”

“It kills the sense of smell.”

“It kills the pain too,” Lisa said. “It numbs the mind and the body, and eventually it kills
them.
Would we be any different if we were born in this village?”

Hollis looked around at the flat, brown faces, the misshapen bodies, blank eyes, and earthy hands. “I don’t know. I do know that something is terribly wrong here. I’ve seen Asian peasants who lived and looked better.”

Lisa nodded. “These people, like their ancestors, have been ill-used by their masters. And you always have to remember the Russian winter. It takes its toll on the mind and body.”

Hollis nodded. “That it does.” The Russian peasant, he thought. Subject of literature, folklore, and college professors. But no one understood their inner lives.

Lisa looked around the room and met each pair of eyes. She said spontaneously, “I am happy to be here.”

Forty faces smiled back. The man beside her asked, “Where did you get your Russian?”

Lisa replied, “My grandmother.”

“Ah,” said a man across the table. “You are Russian.”

That seemed to call for a toast, and another round was poured and drunk.

A man sitting behind Hollis slapped him on the back. “And you? Where did you learn that bad Russian?”

Everyone laughed.

Hollis raised a liter of heather-honey vodka. “From this bottle.”

Again everyone laughed.

The impromptu party went on. Hollis surveyed the hot, smoky room and the people in it. They seemed to blend into the brown wood walls, he thought; their smell, their color, their very being was of the wood and the black earth. He looked at Lisa, joking with a young man across from her, and thought he had not seen her so lively and animated all day. Something about her total acceptance of these people and her affinity with them appealed to him, and he knew at last that he liked her very much.