“That’s called a roller coaster over there,” Madam Molotova explained through her translator. I nodded, choosing not to tell my hostess that I knew what a roller coaster was.
“And here, in the spring, is a large garden. People can read, play games, have picnics, bring children. Can you imagine such a place, right in the middle of our city?” A proud smile lifted Madam Molotova’s large features.
“It’s lovely,” I said appreciatively. “It’s like our Coney Island in New York.”
“What is Coney Island?” Madam Molotova asked.
“A park back home, with a roller coaster like that. Only it’s near a beach. My daughters love to go there. These gardens must be more like Central Park, where my daughters learned to ride their horses. But the roller coaster at Coney—”
“Nyet.” Madam Molotova shook her head decisively, and I did not need the translator to tell me that she’d said no.
Then she went on, and this time the young aide explained to me: “It is not possible what you say, Madam Davies. There is nothing like this outside of the Soviet Union, or anywhere else in the world.”
I sat back in my seat, looking at Polina Molotova, who stared at me, unblinking, as though we were engaged in one of the childhood games that my girls had enjoyed, where the object was to be the last one to look away. Beside her Ivy Litvinova fidgeted in her seat, folding and then unfolding her hands in her lap. I swallowed, deciding not to argue. My job was not to dismantle the Soviet propaganda machine. My job was to make friends for America.
* * *
“How was your lunch with Polina Molotova?” Joe asked that evening, after he had returned home from a day of meetings and we’d readied for bed. He tapped his pencil against his glass of water as he spoke.
I raised my own glass of water and tapped my ivory comb against it as I whispered my response: “A success, I think. It’s interesting, though—her apartment was fine. But if that is the residence of the highest member of the ruling party, I cannot imagine how the common people must live.”
“Oh?” Joe asked.
I nodded. “Threadbare furniture that looked at least a few decades old. The place was big enough, but the rooms were dark. In the dining room, about half the bulbs of the chandelier needed replacing.”
“How was the food?” Joe asked, knowing how seriously I took my menus whenever I hosted.
I grimaced, offering my answer with my sour expression. “Not a single fresh vegetable.” And yet she’d been so proud, even boastful, of her luncheon spread. Of the venison slices and the steaming tureen of thin cabbage soup. Of the osetra caviar, oily mounds of red and black fish eggs beloved by all Russians but now available only to the highest and most powerful. We’d sipped not French wine or American soft drinks but Stolichnaya vodka and chilled Sovetskoje Shampanskoje, the Russian sparkling wine that I found overly sweet and thick.
You see? Polina Molotova had said to me, pointing proudly to her table as servants heaped our simple white plates with what looked to be unappealing globs of lumpy gray purée. We have vegetables in winter, too.
I’d eaten a bit from each dish, to be polite, guessing that the colorless mush must have been potatoes, or perhaps turnips—it was impossible to tell based on my tasteless bites. “And then there was something—a fish from the Volga River as a main course.” I shuddered as I climbed into bed, still tapping my glass as I added: “You know what else I found interesting?”
“What’s that?”
“The home was nice enough, but I did not see a single family photo. Nothing that appeared…I don’t know, personal. Sentimental.”
Joe shook his head. “That doesn’t surprise me. The attachment is to the State. Not to something as fickle or transient as the family unit. You know what they say here? It’s called Lenin’s Rule; they have it drilled into every comrade, from the very first day of grade school and every day after that: ‘Trust no one. Watch your wife. Watch your children. Report to the State on their activities.’？”
I exhaled a puff of breath. After a pause, I said, “Well, sentimental or not, Polina Molotova has invited me on another outing with her next week.”
Joe’s dark eyes creased in interest. “Where to this time?”
“She said it’s called a commission shop. I’m not sure what we’ll be shopping for. But she seemed eager to show me.”
“Wonderful.” Joe planted a kiss on my brow. “I told the president what a smash hit you’ve been here, Mums.”