end. I was proud to see it. Up to now, I’ve been saying ugly things about Americans, but I have to admit that I was proud when this situation was cleared up. It is interesting that the scandal gave rise to a large number of political jokes, a genre I associate more with Communist Europe than America. For example, a poll was taken of all American women, asking if they would sleep with President Clinton. Twenty-five percent said no, forty percent said yes, and the rest: “Even if you paid me, I’d never do that again.”
•
Adriana Babeţi: How did you come to study the languages of Central Europe?
Michael Heim: I was still interested in Russian and I wanted to visit Europe. It was difficult—now everyone travels everywhere, it’s normal, but then people didn’t have so much money. Furthermore, I had only just turned eighteen, and my family wouldn’t let me go by myself. For me, going to Europe in a young people’s tour group was degrading, I refused. I tried to preserve my independence, but I couldn’t make it work, so I split the difference. At the time—1962, when I was nineteen—the first student trips to the Soviet Union were being organized. Before then, it was impossible, you couldn’t go. So there’s the solution. A trip to the Soviet Union was still adventurous. Even dangerous. I showed I was no coward. But to prepare, I had to study Russian. So Superman’s father, my adolescent pride, and last but not least, Dostoyevsky drove me toward Russian. Then there was another story, somewhat . . .
Adriana Babeţi: Romantic?
Michael Heim: That, too, but I was thinking of something else. In Leningrad, I went into a large bookstore for Eastern Bloc countries, a so-called “Friendship Bookstore.” I wanted to buy some German books, since they were cheaper there. I was thinking I’d buy Goethe, Schiller, maybe Brecht. But I found a Chinese salesperson. I realized I could buy books in Chinese, too. I began to copy the book titles down in a notebook. At the time, I knew about two thousand Chinese ideograms, not enough even to read the titles, so I planned to copy them down and look them up later. When the Chinese clerk saw me, she was shocked. For two reasons: because I was an American, of course, and also because it was the first time that she had ever seen someone write left-handed, and in Chinese, no less! And the first time she had seen a ballpoint pen! This was ’62. It was too much for her, so she came over and spoke to me in Russian. Her Russian was even worse than mine. I responded in Chinese and she told me—today, I can’t believe I understood, but then I did—she told me the story of her life, married to a Russian who beat her, and other things. She wanted to go back to China. We met again the next day and she gave me some of her books, and I gave her my pen—a Parker—and left right away. She was scared to be seen with a foreigner. I knew I would not be able to go to China; it was impossible for an American to visit Red China. I was in Russia and told myself that I would never see China. But I could come back to Russia. It would be difficult, but possible. So I decided to major in Slavics.
Marius Lazurca: So, you gave up on China because of a pen?
Michael Heim: Not the pen, but the Chinese woman. Yes, we could say that was the turning point.
Adriana Babeţi: And then?
Michael Heim: I went back to the United States and continued to study Russian. So I had a double major: Oriental Studies and Russian Language and Literature.
Daciana Branea: Did you ever go back to Russia?
Michael Heim: I’ve been back a few times, but only on short visits. I was in Russia in 1970, while I was writing my dissertation.
Daciana Branea: What was your dissertation topic?
Michael Heim: Eighteenth-century Russian literature, and more precisely, the first translators of French and German into Russian. Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, Lomonosov. Lomonosov is wonderful, a genius. Trediakovsky and Sumarokov are important in Russian literary history, but that’s all. I compared their translations and discussed the role of translation in the development of literary Russian. I told my dissertation chair . . .
Daciana Branea: Was he Russian?
Michael Heim: Yes, most of our professors were Russian. But he had left Russia during the Revolution, when he was eleven or twelve, and grown up in Germany, so he was more German than Russian. I translated his history of Russian literature from German into English. About my dissertation, he said to me, “It’s an interesting subject that I know nothing about. See what you can do. You have two years.” I did what I could.
One day while I was working, I answered the phone and heard a man’s voice: “Mike?” Who could it be? I thought it was my uncle. So I answered, “Hi, Uncle Leonard!” “I’m not your uncle,” the voice said indignantly. “Then why did you call me Mike?” I asked, also annoyed. The conversation continued anyway. The man wanted me to go to the Soviet Union, East Berlin, and Prague as the interpreter for a group of American sound engineers. Three weeks. I wouldn’t make any money, but I wouldn’t have to pay for anything while I was there. I said no, since I was busy with my dissertation. Then I thought I could speed up my research before leaving and be okay missing three weeks. It turned out that the man was the head of an organization named, strangely, the Citizen Exchange Corps, a group that arranged trips to the Soviet Union and meetings with local people. It was very political. Typical 1970s. What was the big danger? Nuclear war. This group thought that if enough Americans came to know enough Russians, no one would ever launch a bomb. At the organization’s office, a few hours before departure, I saw a rare object: the second half of the Leningrad phone book. For years and years, it had been impossible to find a phone book for any Soviet city.
Daciana Branea: Why just the second half?
Michael Heim: I don’t know, but I needed letter Ю), the second to last letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. Because the best scholar of Russian translation history lived in Leningrad, a man named Etkind. So I wrote his number down, and the first thing I did when I reached Leningrad was to prepare what I had to say, in the best Russian I could—since I didn’t want my accent to reveal that I was a foreigner. I called, he answered, I said what I had to say, as clearly and practically as I could: who I was and what I wanted. He invited me to his house right away, we talked for three hours. I explained what I had done up to then, he showed me what was and wasn’t good in my work and recommended a bibliography. These were the three most important hours in my academic life. I returned to the Soviet Union in 1980 and 1981, for three or four weeks. In 1984, I took 60 American students. It was awful. On the first day, one of the students came to me and said, “I have to tell you something very important. Everyone in my family has died of cancer, and I think I have it, too.” He was very upset, he had never travelled abroad, or anywhere, and he was sure he had to see an American doctor. I took him to the embassy and he came back with an aspirin. He was perfectly healthy.
Adriana Babeţi: And how did you come to Central Europe?
Michael Heim: As I’ve already said, when I finished college—this was 1964—I decided to study linguistics; I had studied Russian, Chinese, German, and French. I also spoke Spanish, because I had worked as a guide while in college, to make a little money, and there were many tourists from Latin America. They needed people to accompany the tourist groups, so I had a good reason to learn the language quickly and speak it fluently.
Daciana Branea: How quickly can you learn a foreign language?
Michael Heim: Spanish was not too hard; you’ll remember what they used to say about Spanish. We looked down on it. As you know, Spanish has many dialects. Foreigners learn a standard
