Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

Klim began to talk about the members of the Soviet government and who belonged to which camp.

“How do you know all this?” asked Owen in amazement.

“I make it my professional habit to be interested in all the details,” Klim said.

“Do you speak Russian?”

Kim nodded. “I have fluent Russian, English, and Spanish, and I can also speak the Shanghai dialect.”

“Could you write me a short piece now on approval?”

“Of course.”

From the next room came the sound of a child crying, and Seibert came rushing in, looking harassed.

“Your daughter has woken up in the other room,” he told Klim.

“I’ll be right back,” Klim said, growing pale.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” shouted Owen after him. “I’m leaving soon.”

Seibert took Magda by the elbow. “Mr. Owen, I’d like to introduce you to Miss Magda Thomson.”

“Excuse me,” Magda interrupted him. “I have to powder my nose.” She set off toward the door.

Magda had already realized that Owen was hoping to hire Klim Rogov as his correspondent, and there was no way she could get around it. No amount of photographs would make up for the fact that she knew no Russian.

6

Kitty was sitting on the bed howling, her head flung back. “Da-a-a-ddy!”

Klim switched on the night light and took her in his arms. “What is it, little one? I’m here.”

Kitty put her arm around his neck and tried to say something but just kept sobbing and hiccupping.

Klim sat her on his knees. “There, there, little one. Shh…”

He should never have left Kitty alone. How awful for a four-year-old to wake up in an unfamiliar, dark room!

Klim took a notebook from his pocket and, still hugging his daughter, began to write a short article about the currency profiteers who haunted the Moscow markets.

The state bank, Gosbank, exchanged money at the official rate of one ruble, ninety-four kopecks for one US dollar, but in Riga, a dollar was worth four rubles. The unofficial course was used by foreigners living in the USSR as well as thousands of underground traders and smugglers.

“I want to go home,” sobbed Kitty.

“Soon you’ll be at home in your own bed. I promise,” whispered Klim, kissing her on the back of the head, still warm from sleep. “I’ll think of something.”

“What about Mommy?”

“We’ll find her.”

Klim had not even dreamed of finding work in Moscow. It was more than he could have hoped for. With a press card, it would surely be easier for him to find Nina. After all, it was one thing to ask questions as an individual but quite another to ask them on behalf of a respectable news agency.

Klim finished his article, took Kitty in his arms, and went out into the hall.

Owen was already putting on his coat while Seibert rummaged through the pile of coats for the lost gloves.

“Is the article ready?” Owen asked.

Klim handed him the open notebook.

As Owen read the article, his face lit up. “Could you change the money for office expenses on the black market too?”

“Most likely,” said Klim.

Owen handed him his business card. “I think you’re going to work out twice as cheap as your predecessor. Give me a call tomorrow at the hotel, and we can go over the details.”

Owen’s gaze fell on Kitty, and like many others, he could not resist asking about her. “Excuse me. Is that your child?”

Klim nodded. He was annoyed by the way people were always so curious about his daughter’s oriental appearance.

“Well, your personal life is no business of mine,” said Owen, putting out his hand. “I’ll see you soon.”

As the door closed behind Owen, Klim turned to Seibert. “Has Miss Thomson arrived yet?”

Seibert gave a startled blink. “Oh, dear, you should have had a word with her. Magda was hoping to work at United Press, you see, and I think you’ve just stolen her job.”

“And where is she now?” Klim asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know. Go and have a look for her. She’s a big, tall young woman.”

Still holding Kitty, Klim rushed into the living room, then the kitchen, and then began to search through a number of dimly lit rooms full of furniture. Damn it all, he thought. Now Miss Thomson would refuse to speak to him!

He found her in Seibert’s bedroom, sitting on the bed and sobbing, rubbing at her wet cheeks with her hands.

“Get out of here!” she shouted when she saw Klim.

Kitty, frightened, began to whimper, and Klim retreated with her into the corridor.

“You sit here. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, handing her his gold watch that Nina had given him as a present long ago. Kitty had had her eye on it for some time and was overjoyed now to receive this unexpected prize.

Klim headed back into the bedroom, pulled the door almost shut behind him, and sat down in an armchair opposite Magda.

“Miss Thomson,” he said, “my wife has gone missing, and I hope you might be able to help me find her.”

“I have no intention of helping you,” cried Magda. “You stole my job!”

“I won’t take the job if that’s what you want.”

Magda reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

“Go to hell, you and your noble gestures! After speaking to you, Owen will never hire me. And you won’t find your wife, anyway.”

“Why not?”

Through angry curses, Magda told him of her friendship with Nina and about her disappearance.

“She was wearing a red velvet Chinese coat with dragons embroidered on the back,” Magda said. “It was very noticeable. I suppose somebody may have spotted her.”

“Thank you,” said Klim, his head lowered.

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure,” Magda muttered as she left the room, slamming the door so hard that the china devil fell off the chest of drawers and shattered into pieces.

1 ^{BOOK OF THE DEAD}

I’ve signed a contract for the next eleven months and am now officially head of the Moscow Office at United Press. It’s an impressive title, but in fact, the office consists of only one person. So, I have been put in charge of myself.

The first thing I had to do was to pay a visit to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and fill out a sheaf of forms. In order not to arouse undue curiosity, I introduced myself as a New Yorker of Russian origin who had lived several years in China. This seemed to do the trick.

Next, I went to the so-called Press Department, which is the name for the Soviet censors’ office, through which every single article sent abroad must pass.

The Soviet censors seemed a pleasant, well-educated bunch. They all wear spectacles, speak three or four foreign languages, and every one of them is a distinguished revolutionary. Once upon a time, they escaped the evils of Tsarism by going into exile in Europe and spent their time denouncing all those who stifled freedom in Russia. They came back after 1917, and now, they are the ones trying to rid the country of any ideas that offend the powers that be.

The head of the department, Yakov Weinstein, immediately explained the official line to me to forestall any foolish questions on my part.

“True freedom of speech is only possible here in the USSR,” he said. “Ours is the only country in which workers can freely have their say in the press without fearing for their lives. No other nation publishes letters from peasants in its newspapers.”

I have read some of these letters, according to which the inhabitants of remote villages in Siberia use the modern metric system to measure their land, and a proud Don Cossack calls himself a muzhik, a commoner. What does it matter that for a genuine Cossack warrior, such an epithet would be an insult? Such minor details mean nothing to the average reader of Pravda.

“Censorship is a measure we find unavoidable, or at least, necessary,” Weinstein told me, stroking his impressive, tightly curled beard, which made him look rather like a priest. “Unfortunately, foreign journalists are doing their best to damage the reputation of our country in the eyes of the international proletariat. Sometimes, they have no bad intentions; they simply misunderstand the situation. One reporter, for instance, reported that troops had been brought into Moscow after seeing soldiers on the street. In fact, what he saw was merely a group of cadets on their way to the bathhouse. But sometimes foreign journalists deliberately distort the facts. Not long ago, the Daily Telegraph reported that the OGPU was shooting workers. Now tell me—have you seen a single execution or dead body in Moscow?”

I admitted I’ve not seen anything of the sort. And how am I to know what goes on in the cellars of the Lubyanka?

“I’m glad to see you take such a level-headed view of the situation,” said Weinstein, delighted. “We like to lend a helping hand to foreign correspondents and relieve them of the responsibility of digging out information for themselves. Every time a noteworthy event takes place, we send out a communiqué. Journalists write their articles on the basis of our bulletins, and then the material is sent to press. As you can see, we have no intention of standing in your way.”

He also added that if I reported objectively on events, he would help me make a career for myself as a journalist.

“I trust you realize,” he said, “that any success you may have had with a Chinese radio station is neither here nor there. As soon as your contract expires, you will have to find a new job. Stay on the right side of Owen and our department, and you can be assured of glowing references.”

I’m sure this is what he tells every new correspondent. Basically, it was a warning: should I get on the wrong side of Weinstein, the censors will make it impossible for me to work, and my employers will fire me for failing to reach an agreement with the local authorities.

As a matter of fact, Owen also demanded absolute objectivity just before he left Moscow, telling me that if I had anything important that would not get past the censor, I should smuggle it out to London.

“You’ll have to find your own way of sending articles abroad,” he said. “But you have to be very careful. If you’re caught, you could be expelled from the Soviet Union. We’ve already had some cases of expulsion. The Soviet officials are convinced that only the ‘enemies of the working class’ are capable of criticizing their actions, and they believe these enemies should be ‘neutralized.’ So, don’t take unnecessary risks.”

2

Seibert advised Klim to rent an apartment from a friend of his, Elkin.

Elkin was a small man, all angles and sharp edges, with a hooked nose and a ginger toothbrush mustache. He had grown rich during the NEP years and brought a decaying mansion in the elite district of Chistye Prudy in the center of Moscow. Soon, he had opened a secondhand bookstore called Moscow Savannah on the ground floor while renting the rooms on the floor above to foreigners.

“We still haven’t finished refurbishing the building,” he said apologetically as he showed Klim and Kitty around the apartment. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s impossible to get ahold of building materials at the moment.”

It was true that the living room had patches of crumbling plaster on the walls, and the parquet floor was scored and scratched as though heavy furniture had been dragged across it. But it also had arched windows of colored glass and a fireplace decorated with sky-blue ceramic tiles. Elkin had also thrown in some extra pieces of furniture—a piano in need of tuning, a divan, and a ladies’ dressing table with candlesticks in the shape of giraffes.

There were a great many giraffes in the apartment; they adorned everything in sight, from the door handles to the lace curtains.

“What do you think?” Klim asked Kitty. “Would you like to live here?”

“Yes!” Kitty was staring wide-eyed at the bronze heads and horns on the light fitting. “Look at all the funny horses!”

Elkin asked for an astronomical sum in rent—two thousand American dollars for eleven months. “At present, I am in some financial difficulty,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t take any less.”

In the course of the next few days, he and Klim haggled over the rent in a series of telephone calls.

“I’d be better off in the Grand Hotel,” Klim protested. “It’s cheaper there, and the plaster isn’t falling off the walls.”