Siberia,’ Elaine Marchmont said. ‘I’ve never been there. You seem to forget a vacation costs a lot of dollars which I don’t happen to have.’ She blew her nose. ‘It’s the thought of Christmas that really frightens me.’
Christmas. Children around a tree fragile with bright glass. The elation subsided. Tonight a cocktail party.
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’ll have a great Christmas.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘With other people’s children. Buying them lousy Russian toys and helping other women cook the turkey. I just can’t wait.’
‘I think I’ll take a coffee break,’ he said.
The canteen was a small, gloomy place adjoining the transport section. A young German called Hans who had a way with hamburgers and tossed salad was in charge. He was sleekly blond, taciturn and efficient and gave the impression that he had exactly calculated the savings needed to return to The Fatherland to open his own restaurant. In Dusseldorf, perhaps, where a lot of money was spent on schnitzel and steaks and schnapps.
Here crew-cut young Kremlinologists discussed nuances of Soviet policy and reached conclusions which would have astonished the instigators. And when they had decided Soviet intentions in Vietnam, China, the Middle East and Africa they discussed the new ambassador and his wife, gently probing each other’s opinions in case they were in the presence of a confidant of the ambassador. They discussed the winter gathering around them; and they luxuriated in the privations and frustrations of life in Moscow—but only if they were friends because it was easy to become known as someone who was for ever bitching. If they were really close they debated the possibility of love affairs on the embassy circuit in Moscow and, if they were even closer, they confided their own desires.
Here American journalists dropped in for a snack with their hungry, pregnant wives. If there were rivals present they managed through faint praise to deride their exclusive stories; or to hint at their own mysterious assignments with anonymous Russian contacts. Journalists and diplomats mixed warily over hamburgers and salad, canned beer and ginger beer, seeking each other’s knowledge with deference and undertones of contempt for each other’s profession.
Randall took his coffee and joined the correspondents of a magazine and a news agency, who were talking shop while their wives, both as taut-bellied as bass drums, talked about babies, nannies and Russian maids.
They greeted him eagerly. No correspondent had really understood his brief within the embassy. He was a deep one, a dark one, with unfathomed depths of information to be tapped. Or he was a clerical nonentity whose non-slip mask concealed nothing. At cocktail parties each correspondent had stiffened Randall’s whiskies to free the mask; both had failed. Each was valuable to Randall because, with their contacts within the freemasonry of journalism, they gathered a little information from the correspondents of other countries; and sometimes, but very rarely, from Russians.
‘How’s the brains department these days?’ said the agency man. He had no idea what Randall’s job was.
‘Fine,’ Randall said. ‘Just fine.’
The agency man’s wife said: ‘I’m darned sure my maid has been stealing my cigarettes.’ In Cleveland, Randall thought, she would have been lucky to have had a cleaning woman in twice a week.
Everyone made plump jokes about pregnancy. Both women, terrified of Russian midwifery, were taking the train to Helsinki to have their babies.
‘The trouble with Russia where abortion is legal is they might think I’ve gone in to have one,’ said the magazine man’s wife.
‘I guess they would think you were a little on the tardy side,’ Randall said. Everyone laughed. That was one of the assets of being mysterious: everyone laughed at your jokes. ‘What are the agencies putting out today?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know about THE agencies. We haven’t moved a thing except the Pravda stuff on Vietnam and the Chinese. I sometimes wonder who they hate most—the Chinks or us.’
‘They don’t hate either,’ Randall said. ‘It’s just propaganda Soviet style.’
‘It’s so awful,’ said the magazine man’s wife. ‘This slaughter in Vietnam. Those terrible pictures of mutilated babies.’
The men regarded her uneasily. She had been emotional lately what with the baby coming and Moscow in general.
Behind them Hans moved stealthily from hamburger to steak.
‘It makes me want to cry,’ she said.
‘There, there, honey,’ said her husband. ‘You just take yourself to Finland soon and have that son for us.’
‘Sure I’ll have your son,’ said his wife. ‘Just so that he can go to Vietnam and be killed.’
‘That’s a long time ahead,’ said her husband.
‘Sure it’s a long time,’ she said. ‘I just wonder what little old battlefield they’ll have fixed up for him by then.’
The agency man’s wife said: ‘It could be a daughter.’
And Randall, bored by the dramatisation of the unborn, said: ‘Let’s worry about the weather. It’s the only thing we know for sure. It’s going to be very cold very soon.’
‘I don’t think I could stand another full winter,’ the agency man’s wife said.
‘We’re moving off,’ her husband explained.
‘Where to?’ Randall asked politely.
‘Paris, I guess. I’ve done a Vietnam stint.’
Vietnam coloured everything if you were an American, Randall thought. Especially in Russia. Every day the Press attacked American policy with fierce words which had been de-gutted by repetition: instead of crusading the newspapers nagged. But nagging eroded the questioning spirit. ‘Bandit aggression … dirty war.’ The phrases stuck and were assimilated like repetitive advertising. Student demonstrators automatically daubed their banners with these words. They had become a habit.
The counsellor for cultural affairs who looked as if he might have been a prize-fighter walked in and went through a pantomime of being cold. Shivering, rubbing his hands, calling for hot, very hot, coffee. Randall wondered why he still wore a lightweight suit. A first secretary who dealt with Press queries looked round the door, noticed the Pressmen present and hesitated. But the correspondents spotted him and waved; he was trapped.
Two girl secretaries with sallow complexions drank milk and talked intensely. Randall guessed they were discussing their careers or last night’s Bolshoi. ‘So virile … a real man … imagine him leaping into your bedroom.’ It was the Bolshoi.
‘When is your wife coming back?’ the magazine man’s wife asked.
You bitch, he thought. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I had a letter from her just this morning. She’s not quite up to it yet.’
‘Poor girl. I sympathise with her. It’s too darned easy to crack up in this place.’
‘She didn’t exactly crack up,’ Randall said. ‘She would have stayed on if
