Republican Party Reptile(10)

Two of the experts were really journalists. Natalia was a pleasant blond woman of about forty. She didn’t have much to say. Nikolai was a sturdy guy in his mid-thirties, completely western in dress and manner. He had lived as a foreign correspondent in Switzerland and Austria for seven years, wore a bush jacket like any other foreign correspondent, and was as bluff and hard-drinking as any newspaper man. I gathered this wasn’t much of an assignment. Nikolai took no notes at the peace confabs, and Natalia took only a few.

A third expert, Orlonsky, was a sinister-looking type with a half-Russian, half-Tartar face and slitlike eyes. He turned out to be a bored economist from the Soviet Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies who was along to brush up on his English in preparation for some academic conference he was going to visit in San Francisco. The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the Village Voice for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America’s rural areas. But Orlonsky seemed to be a look-alive fellow. He wanted to talk about America’s marvelous demand-side goods-distribution system and did our Reagan administration economic institutes have screws loose or what? Also, where did our automobile industry go? But the Americans wanted to talk about peace and Soviet-American relations.

Two more official-expert types were Dr. Bullshovich from the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of World Economy and International Relations and Professor Guvov from the department of philosophy and sociology at Moscow U. Dr. Bullshovich was a lean, dry character with a Jesuitical wit that was lost on his audience. Between formal peace activities he hid somewhere. Guvov was a doctrinaire buffoon who looked like a Hereford cow and was a big favorite with the leftists. “He is not a professor,” one of the crew members told me later. “He is, you would call it, instructor. He should be teaching military schools.”

Besides the experts there were thirty or more officers, sailors, waitresses, stewards, and cruise personnel. Some of the higher-ranking crew members spoke English but usually didn’t let on. They preferred to stare blankly when the Americans began to complain. And the Americans did complain, the leftists worst of all. Between praise of the Soviet union   it was “It’s too noisy, too rough, too breezy. The chair cushions are too hard. And what’s that smell? This food is awful. Too greasy. Can’t I order something else? I did order something else. Didn’t someone say I could order something else? I’m sure I can order something else if I want to, and, young lady, the laundry lost one of my husband’s socks. They’re expensive socks and one of them is lost.”

Translating the complaints, or pretending to, were a half-dozen Intourist guides. They began to have a haunted look before we were two days out of port.





VERY EARLY WEDNESDAY

MORNING, JULY 21


When I came to, after the Ivor expedition, I stumbled into the ship’s bar. We’d cast off while I was asleep, and motion of the boat combined with motion of my gullet. I couldn’t have looked well. Nikolai was sitting on a stool next to one of the Intourist guides, a dark, serious type named Sonya. I gripped the bar with both hands and tried to decide which of the impossible Russian soft drinks would be easiest to vomit. “You need vodka,” said Nikolai, motioning to the barmaid. I drank the awful thing. “Now,” said Nikolai, “how did you get that President Reagan?”

“I voted for him,” I said. “How did you get Brezhnev?”

Nikolai began to laugh. “I do not have this great responsibility.”

“How are you liking the Soviet union  ?” asked Sonya.

“I’m not,” I said.

She was worried. “No? What is the matter?”

“Too many Americans.”

Sonya kept a look of strict neutrality.

“I have not met many Americans,” said Nikolai. “They are all like this, no?” He made a gesture that encompassed the boat, winked, and ordered me another vodka.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Perhaps they are just old, a bit,” said Sonya with the air of someone making an obviously fallacious argument. “But,” she brightened, “they are for peace.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “They are progressive. They are highly progressive. They are such great progressives I think I have almost all of them talked into defecting.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” said Nikolai.





MUCH LATER WEDNESDAY

MORNING, JULY 21


We docked on a scruffy island somewhere up near Volgadonsk. One of the U.S. peace experts, a pacifist from the American Friends Service Committee, got up a volleyball game against the crew. “Now let’s play and let’s play hard,” he told the American team. “But don’t forget we’re playing for fun.” The Russians trounced them.