During a brief monument lacuna, Marya said, “Do any of you have questions that you would like to ask about the Soviet union ?”
“Where can I get a—” But the leftists beat me to it.
“What is the cost of housing in the Soviet union as a percentage of worker wages?” asked one.
“What is the retirement age in the Soviet union ?” asked another.
“What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?”
“Is higher education free in the Soviet union ?”
“What about unemployment?”
Marya answered, pointed out a few more monuments, and asked, “Do any of you have other questions you would like to ask about the Soviet union ?”
Exactly the same person who’d asked the first question asked exactly the same question again. I thought I was hearing things. “What is the cost of housing in the Soviet union as a percentage of worker wages?”
And that flipped the switch.
“What is the retirement age in the Soviet union ?”
“What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?”
“Is higher education free in the Soviet union ?”
Marya answered the questions again. The third time it happened she began to lose her composure. I could hear her filling up empty places in the sightseeing landscape. “Look, there’s a building! And there’s another! And over there are several buildings together! And here [sigh of relief] are many monuments.”
All the time we were in Russia, at every opportunity, the questions began again, identical questions with identical wording. I’m proud to say I don’t remember a single one of the answers. Except the one about unemployment: “There is no unemployment in the Soviet union . The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job.” A pretty scary idea, I’d say.
Later in the trip, when I’d fled the bus tours and was wandering on my own, the lumpier kind of Russian would come up and ask me questions—not the “You are foreign?” sort of questions but rapid, involved questions in Russian. Perhaps because my hair was combed and I wore a necktie (two Soviet rarities) they thought I had special access to the comb-and-necktie store and must therefore be a privileged party official who knew what was what. I’ve wondered since if they were asking me, “What is the cost of housing in the Soviet union as a percentage of worker wages?”
MONDAY, JULY 19
One of the bus questioners stood next to me as we waited to board our flight to Rostov. She looked out at the various Aeroflot planes standing on the tarmac and managed a statement that was at once naive, gratuitous, patronizing, and filled with progressive ardor. “Airplanes!” she said. “The Soviet union has thousands and thousands of airplanes!”
I never did find out what this lady looked like. She was only about four foot eleven, and all I ever saw was a skull top of hennaed hair with a blur of fast-moving jaw beneath it. She had that wonderful ability some older people have of letting her mind run right out her mouth.
“Well,” she’d say, “here I am with my seat belt buckled up just sitting right here in the airplane seat and folding my hands in my lap and I’ll move my feet over a little so they’re on top of my flight bag and pull my coat up over my shoulders, whoops, I’m sitting right on it but I’ll just wiggle around a little like this and pull it over my shoulders . . .” For hours, all the way to Rostov.
The peaceniks, especially the older peaceniks, were more visually interesting than the leftists. Somebody ought to tell a sixty-year-old man what he looks like in plastic sandals, running shorts, and a mint-green T-shirt with Kenneth Patchen plagiarisms silk-screened on the front.
The peaceniks were sillier-acting than the leftists too. There was a pair of Quaker ministers with us, man and wife. But they were not Quakers as one usually pictures them. They had “gone Hollywood.” Imagine a Quaker who came up to you in the L.A. airport and tried to get a donation for a William Penn button. Not that they did that, but it always looked to me as though they were about to. Anyway, this couple bore different last names. When we got aboard the ship in Rostov, a passenger went to return a book to the husband.
“I’m sorry,” said the wife at their cabin door. “He’s not here.”
“But can’t I give the book to you?” asked the passenger. “It belongs to your husband.”
“We’re not the same persons,” said the wife.
My cabin mate was no leftist. “I’m not pro-Soviet,” he said as he watched me unpack a necktie with little duck hunters all over it. “I’m a retired peace activist. I mean I’m not retired from peace activism—you know what I mean.” He had spilled a bottle of Camphophenic in his luggage and had gastrointestinal trouble from the food and wouldn’t use the air conditioning because it might give him a cold, so all the way to Kazan our cabin smelled like the bathroom at a Vick’s factory. Three bus tours after we met he told me, “This country is just like a big club. Did you know there’s no unemployment? The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job!”