and weaknesses to the KGB. Her father was a local Communist party bigwig; and she, with her strong determination, lack of scruples, and focus on her mission, was set on a career path to success. I sympathized with her ambition and tenacity, but was uncomfortable with her prying and intrusive questions. Raised to be a “good girl,” and still not very worldly, I didn’t know how to cope with this unwelcome relationship, so I remained courteous, but distant and unforthcoming.
Fortunately, Ivan was less persistent, and sometimes even appeared reluctant or ashamed. But he was soon succeeded by German (Herman; but no H in Russian), to be Jim’s newly planted friend. German was more sophisticated, educated, and even aristocratic: his grandfather had been an Orthodox priest — unlike Roman Catholic priests, Eastern Orthodox priests can and do marry and have children. Perhaps they reckoned he would be a better match for Jim, and in that, they were partly right. We did, in fact, spend a bit more time with him, especially because he had also been assigned to accompany our group on some of our travels.
We came to know other people as well, like Anna, the serious, down-to-earth student of philology across the hall. A small woman, with large brown eyes and brown hair, she was both intrigued and cautious in her visits. She enjoyed borrowing my books, then asking questions to fill out her picture of what America was like. We talked about daily life: “What kind of house do you live in?” she asked, in English, nodding her head slowly to absorb the answer: “We have no house,” I replied, “only dorm rooms and small rented flats.” “What do you eat for your meals at home?” And such.
We also talked “girl talk,” including about health problems. She, like most Russian women I then met, knew little about the functioning of the female body, the general information that most girls at home picked up from popular books (or the booklet, “What to tell your daughter,” that Kotex sent free to shy or anxious mothers). For Anna this was not academic, as she suffered a great deal, even becoming bedridden, from some sort of female problem, but without the benefit of good medical diagnosis, care or cure. Sadly, we watched her and other friends and their families suffer from conditions or illnesses we thought would have been easily addressed in the States, helped by antibiotics or aspirin or other medications we took for granted—but were not available there.
When our British friend down the hall became ill mid-winter with flu-like symptoms, fever, and pains, his Russian roommate called for medical help. A medical professional in a dirty white coat soon came by. She treated him by placing mustard plasters on his chest, and suggesting he eat strawberry jam; and urged that he open wide the windows of his room for fresh air—which she then did with gusto, quickly chilling the room. Perhaps this approach worked; in any case, he did eventually recover.
Meanwhile, next door, with our friends gone off to Siberia, another married couple quickly filled their suite. At 6:00 a.m. their first morning, we awoke to the blast of booming radio noise. When we tried to speak to them later in the day, to ask them please to tune down the radio in the early morning, we found them to be boorish, rough, and slovenly—and clearly very heavy sleepers. Their snoring permeated the thick cement walls between us, their radio blasted, and we found we could do nothing about it for the rest of our stay.
Ironically (or necessarily), in a country that did not seem to have as high a standard of sanitation as other European countries, cleanliness was highly valued in the dorm. Cleaning duty for the kitchen and halls rotated among students. Additionally, our rooms were inspected, unannounced but frequently, for dust, dirt, and clutter. A large chart posted in the hall publicized individual ratings from 1—5 on the cleanliness scale—a matrix of names running down the left column; dates across the top; and grades from 1—5 in the grid. I figured we had sufficient disabilities as The Enemy without adding dirt to the list: we kept our rooms clean and earned high ratings on the chart, and showed up for kitchen cleaning duty when scheduled.
I wrote home on November 11, 1965:
Jim is now doing his “cleaning duty” on the floor. About once each month, each person is granted the opportunity to clean the common kitchen at 7:30 a.m., sweep the corridor, and then serve a five-hour shift answering the single telephone on the floor.
I’ve wondered how long the Sanitary Commission lasted after our time, and whether it still inspects the increasingly run-down rooms of the university today.
Cleaning the kitchen’s layers of grease, garbage, and stickiness took a strong stomach. Without detergent, sponges, cleansers, and steel wool, the kitchen suffered from hopelessly entrenched dirt. That is why I still remember the moment real life imitated television advertising art.
Jim’s turn to clean the kitchen came. He marched in with our can of Ajax, unknown in the USSR, rubbing years of stains and grease from the white porcelain sink and stove. Oblivious to his surroundings, Jim did not see behind him, watching in utter awe, the tiny cleaning lady (uborshchitsa) of our floor, old, toothless, amazed. Witnessing the miracle, she afterward treated him almost like a god. Far better than walking on water, he had cut right through the water to the bottom of the sink!
She was so taken with Jim that when she had a special joy in her life, she came to see him and share the moment with him. She invited him into the kitchen, conspiratorially, to reveal—as she unwrapped the newspaper surrounding the item—one plucked skinny dead duck, a duck she had purchased unexpectedly, and triumphantly, for her family’s holiday dinner. She could not have been prouder if she had shot it herself. Jim expressed the admiration she hoped for. At the end of our stay, Jim presented her, along with our gratuity and probably far more precious, the remains of the can of Ajax.
We were surprised at the Victorian decor of the university lounges, of hotels and living rooms, in the country we had imagined to be out of Brave New World. But just as surprising were the remnants of what seemed Victorian attitudes, a gap between the doing and saying, what was practiced and what was discussed or displayed. For men and women to show affection in public, to hold hands, or exchange kisses was considered socially unacceptable. But privately, and before the ’60s revolution took hold in the States, unmarried people were engaged in what we would have considered promiscuous sex. Unprotected, since there were virtually no condoms, diaphragms, or other family-planning measures available. The measure of last resort, abortion, was widely used, but not by choice: no woman relished this surgical procedure performed without benefit of anesthetics, and often without the level of hygiene to prevent infection and sterility. But abstinence did not seem a popular alternative. (Is it ever? I wondered, when I thought even about the married couples we knew with unplanned pregnancies.)
Our friend Emily, a graduate student from Great Britain, learned another lesson in the suite she shared with her Russian roommate, Irina. Emily washed and hung her underwear to dry in the bathroom they shared. “How can you allow your underwear to hang in the bathroom when male visitors might visit?” Irina implored Emily, appalled at her immodesty. This might not have seemed odd coming from a virgin, but Irina had been having sexual relations with a number of different men during the year. And she was not unusual. The incongruous prudery that governed public life contrasted with the casual and serial sex practiced privately. Not professed, just performed.
At the same time, in public places, blue-collar women, women construction workers, plasterers and painters, and other laborers on scaffolds and on the ground (women, as always, serving as the heavy labor force of Russia) thought nothing in hot weather of removing their blouses and working in their brassieres. And nobody seemed to notice, except foreigners like us.
Proper behavior in public was enforced, I learned the hard way, by the babushki, the keepers of tradition. I still hear the shrill voices of old ladies screaming at me, “Girl, what are you doing?” This question was addressed to me when I sat with my legs crossed; or conversely, in trousers, sat with my legs akimbo; and sometimes when I didn’t even know what I could be doing wrong, although I knew it must be on that mysterious List.
There seemed to be a correct or conventional
