Russia On Five Headaches A Day
Diamond, Sigmund
RUSSIA ON FIVE HEADACHES ADAY NOTES FROM A TRAVELER'S DIARY SKMUND DIAMOND Leningrad: September 11 The Intourist guide who met us at the Leningrad airport a few days ago assured us that though...
...He laughed: "They were both there six years ago...
...The point would be for one contestant to manipulate the red counters—Lenins—in such a way as to have an unobstructed view of every square on the board, for the other contestant to be able to carve out areas of privacy in which he cannot be observed by Lenin...
...We did...
...I walked slowly back to Room 5; how was I going to make myself understood to the headwaiter...
...And out we marched, those having the least contact with reality trying to explain that we had already eaten lunch...
...I tumbled into bed, and heard the young Frenchman on the plane from Riga: "Aside from that, what do you think of the planning here...
...The door to the plane remained open and the moveable stairway remained in place, but we were given no explanation for the delay...
...My aimless prowl, a defense against boredom, now became a purposeful hunt for a refuge...
...Is he asleep...
...We barreled through the door, down the stairs, and were brought up short at the barricade that blocked our exit from the building...
...He looked surprised and spoke to her again...
...What is your name...
...But I do not see your name here, Professor Fisher...
...I tell him that the emperors of ancient China used to maintain two court historians, the historian of the left hand, who recorded what was said, and the historian of the right hand, who recorded what was done...
...The psychologist and I returned to the main waiting room, and then to the dining room...
...Why?—no answers...
...I came across a group of tourists from New York, and among them was a former colleague in the History Department at Columbia University, now professor emeritus...
...I exploded: "Then fire her...
...in western Europe and the United States, "Civil Liberties...
...I fled him down the room to my seat...
...She explained the situation to him in Russian...
...Another plane has just arrived from Leningrad...
...Do not shout in my country...
...and reread...
...In principle, yes, but in practice, not yet...
...Diamond...
...They were pushing and noisy and alternately wheedling and threatening in their effort to win her assistance in the search for their lost luggage...
...And waited...
...He clasped his hands as if in prayer, and rocking back and forth before her asked a third time...
...perhaps your bag was placed on that plane by mistake...
...His group had been scheduled to leave for Moscow at 8 A.M...
...only in practice is it late...
...I do so, and a trinity of Intourist clerks tells me: 1) the Intourist representative at the airport had made a mistake in telling us that the minibus leaves every 10 minutes...
...the second would leave at 10:43, the third at 10:56—every 13 minutes for most of the day...
...Shirley and I were put at a large table against the wall, well separated from the others...
...Angrily, she refused to let us move forward or to listen to my explanation that we had been told aboard the plane to return to the diningroom...
...The man who kept dashing back and forth came by again, this time accompanied by two other men, and disappeared into the administrator's office...
...It arrived on a later plane," he said proudly, vindicating more than half a century of the Soviet experiment...
...Since I was not sure whether the newspaper reporter would be able to join us for dinner after we had had our drinks (Shirley was waiting for a call from her at the hotel), I answered, "Either two or three...
...But we don't have a reservation in your name...
...But it was Intourist who told me to come here to make the reservation...
...It's not my responsibility," she says loftily...
...beaming, she picked up the red book again, and again her finger moved from line to line...
...I was home at last...
...I asked—in Russian—one of two men in the line behind me if he could speak English...
...I managed to speak: "I forgot to ask you at what time we may come for dinner...
...Who does she think she is, Madam Brezhnev...
...I found him, and, splicing words of Russian, English, and German, I tried to make him understand...
...In principle it is not late...
...It can't be," he said...
...On the way the cab was flagged down by the police for exceeding the speed limit...
...and I walked slowly to the door, savoring the art nouveau decor of the restaurant...
...Is he drunk...
...That is what I want to do—to make a reservation for dinner tonight...
...This morning we went to the minibus stand at 10:15 to go to the Museum of Russian Art, and found that the first bus was not scheduled to leave until 10:30...
...the two waitresses looked up angrily and flounced out of the room...
...He pushed by her, but she stoutly refused to allow us to sit with the Californians, whom she began to serve soup for the second time...
...the objectivity he practiced in his professional work he found difficult to apply here—these were traveling companions, not patients, and it was hard to live so intimately in an atmosphere so redolent of oranges, Ronald Reagan, the benefits of early retirement, granola, and the Rose Bowl game...
...It never happens...
...These are the Intourist reservations, and I don't see your name here...
...I don't understand why people simply don't tear that driver apart when he gets here...
...And down the corridor we went...
...snuffing out the cigarettes, they wiped the top of the counter...
...The California tourists went straight through the door to the diningroom, and we went with them...
...When they reappeared they went through the same motions as if on instant replay on television: each carried a single plate through the swinging door that led from the kitchen...
...Moment," he said, placatingly...
...I was stunned into silence and immobility, my mind a turmoil of thoughts I dared not express, could barely bring myself to acknowledge: the wasted hours with the administrator, who could not speak English...
...three hours later they were still waiting with no explanation for the delay but with the unofficial solace of hearing that the weather in Moscow was bad...
...When the crowd around her became too noisy or when someone spoke with insufficient respect, she put down her stamp, folded her arms on her more-than-ample bosom, impaled him with a look, and decapitated him with a sentence...
...And out we went, prodded along by Aeroflot employees...
...Impatiently he said, "Speak English, I can understand...
...We walked slowly to the rear compartment and strapped ourselves into our seats...
...Again, "Nyet...
...Your existence has been disproved...
...For that you will not get a room...
...He smiled pleasantly and succeeded in telling me that I must see the administrator, and he accompanied me to the administrator's office...
...They looked as if they had been waiting for us for some time but were too polite to show their annoyance...
...and waited...
...we, too, had been scheduled to leave at 10:30...
...She closed the book with a bang, pushed away the pile of notes from Intourist, heaved herself up from the chair, and said: "Come with me...
...I covered every inch of ground in the waiting room, looking at the souvenir shops, at the books and magazines being sold, at the dozens of varieties of hard candies, at the souvenir postcards (there were none of the Rembrandts and Titians in the Hermitage, but dozens of the Leningrad airport, and scores of Ilyushins and other planes—in mid-flight, on the ground, passengers boarding them, passengers debarking...
...It is only a matter of understanding the proper relation between theory and practice...
...and waited...
...Tired, irritated, angry passengers were quick to give advice: let them go by flying carpet...
...No," he says, "I am a Rumanian, and I find this very funny...
...I said I would look for the Intourist office at the airport to arrange that Shirley and I should get lunch...
...When the driver gets here, the people will fall to their knees, they will kiss him in gratitude...
...Wesley Fisher...
...He shrugged, said something to his colleague, and turned back to me with an air of helplessness...
...I said that I had just come from Aeroflot, where I had been told that I should take up the matter with Intourist...
...She read it, like a judge pronouncing sentence, she said "Nyet...
...She says that you are illegally trying to get two meals," one of the Englishmen told us...
...1 am a professor in an American university...
...I know that you do not have my name...
...We left in search of a buffet on another floor...
...I asked one of the clerks at the service bureau of the Intourist Hotel to make reservations for us...
...the lost hours with the headwaiter who could...
...I tried again, still smiling: "Intourist has not made a reservation for me...
...The Intourist representative gave her the forms I had filled out and waited for her to stamp them...
...Do you speak English...
...He hung up, went back to her desk, and spoke to her like a delinquent child pleading for mercy...
...He told me that this is a great restaurant...
...The door was locked, but it was made of glass and we could see into the buffet...
...I am so filled with the pent-up frustration of trying to deal with official indifference or rudeness that, knowing I have a sympathetic ear, I am reluctant to see him go and I press on with my tale of woe...
...let them go by Air India...
...Tell me, did you go to Babi Yar...
...But it's just around the corner...
...and waited...
...the headwaiter returned to his business...
...we just want to sit down with these people and wait for the plane...
...We found a place to sit in the balcony and I began to prowl...
...We drove back to the main entrance to the airport, where the Intourist man put us into a cab for the trip to Moscow...
...At the second-floor restaurant of the hotel I saw a young waiter and asked him where I might make the reservation...
...The man who had spoken to the waiter went in and out of the room, always in a rush, and when some minutes had become many minutes I looked at him inquiringly...
...He said he'd go with me, because he suspected there would be an argument and he wanted to know what would be said...
...2) the minibus service is not a function of Intourist and, besides, the schedule applies only for the summer and summer is now officially over...
...The lines are busy," he said...
...I followed her at once...
...They told me to come here to make it for myself...
...When I mentioned that we had been in the airport since 9 A.M., that our plane had been delayed since 10:30 A.M., that "group tourists" were now being taken to lunch, and that we, too, were entitled to lunch though we were merely "individual tourists," one of them replied that I should take up the matter with Aeroflot: "it's not Intourist's responsibility...
...And, now in noisy desperation, "But Intourist said____" "You have raised your voice to me...
...Not all the diners had finished their soup when the Danish tour director came running into the room: "Quick, the plane is about to leave...
...she did not look at all surprised and again said, "Nyet...
...they would talk with one another, disappear into the kitchen and then emerge, each one carrying a single dish, light up a cigarette and talk with each other again, slide a moist rag across the marble surface of the counter with all deliberate speed...
...He listened, frowned, then looked at me and with a grand gesture picked up a small flag—the kind used in restaurants to mark tables that have been reserved— and placed it on a table next to the aisle...
...With maddening imperturbability, they ignored the tourists who were by now banging on the door...
...I waited in the hall outside her office...
...I was dissolved by delight, and detente seemed quite reasonable as, gratefully, I shook hands with her and with the head-waiter...
...He had grown up in Massachusetts and had gone to college in New York City and in Wisconsin...
...Not a picture of Lenin in sight—no accusing stares, no beneficent smiles, no look reminding us of our duty, no classic brow or furrowed forehead, no look that sees into us and through us from the nothing we have been to the all that we shall be...
...But we don't have a reservation in your name...
...You don't understand," he says with slightly exaggerated patience...
...The next victim would approach and give her his form, which she would read with the care lavished by a scholar on some ancient text...
...But I do not see your name here," her smile became a frown...
...Eventually he came and we went with him to the area where the baggage was waiting to be claimed...
...I told him about the small stone marker and the wooden sign that tells of the memorial that will be built...
...Tell her we don't want any more soup...
...at 7:15 we stood at the door of the third-floor buffet where there was a sign that breakfast is served starting at 7:30 A.M...
...and at last I thought I found it...
...He spoke quietly to Gospozha Defarge...
...And suddenly the voice—my voice—was hushed, as if the speaker had suddenly become aware of his temerity...
...stony-faced, she would look at some form shoved at her by an importunate client and decide slowly—oh, so slowly—whether to place upon it the stamp that would move it to some other desk where another Ozymandias, equally wise and powerful, would decide whether to place a stamp upon it...
...4) take it up with Intourist in Moscow...
...I am not Professor Fisher...
...In the whole city of Leningrad is there no other bus available...
...On the other side of the glass door lay the Forbidden Kingdom, which we could see but could not enter...
...I had only to "wait for some minutes...
...you can go there...
...I know, but we have just come from the Intourist office and were told you would have a room for us...
...Moscow: September 15 Our departure from Leningrad was a shambles and our arrival in Moscow was havoc...
...The waiter turned to me and said that the administrator was out at the moment but would soon return, and that she would arrange the reservation...
...I am Professor Diamond...
...We were shunted off to a dirty table, where—either because they had had enough soup for one afternoon or because they were overcome by a spirit of nationalism—we were joined by some of the Californians...
...Not a picture...
...Wesley Fisher...
...She turned round and headed back toward the corridor...
...Don't tell me you can't do anything," I shouted at him...
...When it had still not been announced 10 minutes before the scheduled departure, I returned to the desk to inquire...
...Go to Intourist upstairs...
...He tried a third time, and I realized with a sinking feeling that he was not a rear-admiral, but only an extra from a roadshow of H.M.S...
...He went off to see if he could get some information about the flight, and returned with the news that his tour director—a Dane who specializes in tours to the USSR—had told him that the delay was likely to last for a few more hours, but that Aeroflot had decided to give lunch to his group since it was now 3 P.M., well after the three-hour limit after which, by international airlines agreement, food is to be served to passengers who are delayed in their journeys...
...Nyet...
...She smiled shyly and said modestly that she did, but only a little...
...It was open...
...I say to him that since he shows so much detailed knowledge about the matter he must be from Leningrad...
...Wesley Fisher...
...How large is your group...
...Oh," she said...
...You will go to the dining room and will be served lunch...
...You must wait some minutes," I was told...
...in order to get an 8:20 car to the airport...
...We drove to the shed...
...Fight back, you won't win, but fight back...
...you want to make one...
...It was nearly midnight...
...Beaming, she said, "Ah, twenty-three...
...Two waitresses were there...
...I begin to wonder if there is such an organization as Intourist with headquarters in Moscow...
...and reread, and all this was mere prelude to the climactic act of affixing her stamp...
...I am not opposed to the payment of bribes in all circumstances ("in principle, yes, but...
...We boarded the plane—it was a different one, much larger than the first—and as we walked through the first compartment we were greeted politely and smilingly by a large group of Pakistanis...
...She never once looked at him nor changed her expression...
...The tour groups were met by their leaders...
...We talked about our children, about education, about racial problems in the United States, and then suddenly he asked me if we had been in Kiev on our trip...
...you must be overlooking it...
...The flattery worked...
...others had to catch early planes and had been told that breakfast would be available at 7:30...
...Sitting there, my heart returned to normal but my brain did not, and I began to consider the possibility of developing a board game, something like the Japanese game of Go...
...Why won't she stamp the forms," I asked...
...Because she says she only stamps forms when they are presented to her in groups, and this is a single form...
...I went off to make the reservation...
...We must find the headwaiter and ask him if he can make a reservation for tonight...
...until a young woman boarded the plane and announced: "You must wait for some minutes...
...and waited...
...We returned to the Intourist office, where he gave me some claim forms to be filled out and said he would call Leningrad to inquire about the matter...
...Thirty minutes later, the bus still not having appeared, the Rumanian and his friend left the queue, waved goodbye to me, and expressed the hope that I'd get to the Russian Museum before the weekend...
...And then, despair...
...I continued to smile...
...He returned a few minutes later with a man whose uniform proclaimed him to be at least a rear-admiral...
...This table is yours for the whole night...
...Rumors began to fly...
...I was standing between a long glass curtain wall that looked directly over the airport—no place to hang a picture, not even of Lenin, there—and a small booth at which candy was being sold...
...In my eagerness to keep the conversation going I resorted to smiles and flattery once again...
...The call never went through...
...Professor Fisher is in New York...
...I reminded him that since all Americans are millionaires I had no need for his money and that my concern was with peaceful coexistence and detente, both of which required the meticulous performance of contractual obligations...
...and don't tell me to take it up with Intourist in Moscow...
...but we had no sooner entered the room when, with a shout, the waitress who had served us earlier came charging after us...
...Let's go...
...And what if it should be indignantly refused...
...A man detached himself from the California group and came over to talk to me...
...having put the plates on the counter, they lit cigarettes and chatted with one another...
...Everywhere I walked I was aware that I was being watched by the eyes of Lenin...
...Professor Fisher is the one who recommended that we eat here...
...I ran out into the hall in search of the administrator...
...they picked up their luggage and departed...
...The first clerk asked me to wait for a moment, went off and then returned with a woman dressed in a blue uniform...
...We arrived in Moscow well after nightfall, having lost nine hours for which we were paying deluxe prices forced upon us by Intourist...
...the bag was not there...
...RUSSIA ON FIVE HEADACHES ADAY NOTES FROM A TRAVELER'S DIARY SKMUND DIAMOND Leningrad: September 11 The Intourist guide who met us at the Leningrad airport a few days ago assured us that though our hotel was a bit remote from the center of town, we would have no problem with transportation: "Minibuses leave the hotel every 10 minutes, and it is only six or seven minutes to the Nevsky Prospekt...
...And do not take money from tourists for services which you do not provide...
...The California tourists were seated together, "in a group...
...from that point we proceeded slowly to the plane...
...we entered and had a cup of coffee...
...only now do I see the humor...
...We checked in at the airport and were told that the departure of the plane would in due course be announced...
...when he had finished she read the form again, looked at it, and stamped it...
...When they emerged they were smiling with satisfaction, as if they had just concluded an important business deal...
...It was not Intourist who sent you...
...With the third "Nyet" he was disemboweled, and lay bleeding on the floor...
...He picked up the forms I had filled out under his direction and said he would go with me to the area where the baggage is put after it has been removed from the planes...
...I prefer to speak English," he said with great dignity...
...He stood up, reached into his pocket, and threw me a note: "If you are so poor, use that...
...and waited...
...We had been served all but dessert and coffee when the Danish tour director burst in and told us we must leave at once because the plane was ready to depart...
...What started as an idle thought became an obsession: could I find anyplace in that room where the eyes of Lenin could not find me...
...He says the table is yours for tonight," the administrator said, beaming...
...We boarded it, strapped ourselves in, and waited for takeoff...
...For me the problem arises because I am never sure that I am offering the bribe to the right person or that the amount may not be ludicrously too much or insultingly too little...
...But I thought that in this society you had found a way of integrating theory and practice," I say...
...I show my anger, and her aloofness turns nasty: "Don't bother me...
...I told her what had happened...
...Has the bus broken down...
...The jets began to whine, and we were on our way...
...One moment please"—and he went off in search of higher authority...
...Her finger went from line to line down the pages of the book...
...While waiting at the reception desk of the Intourist Hotel to be checked in, we watched in numb disbelief while two young Swiss scientists tried to tell the administrator that they were invited guests at a scientific conference and had been told by Intourist that they could get a room at the Intourist Hotel...
...One of our bags was missing...
...The clerk who had been reading looked up from his book...
...Ah, Intourist"—and she smiled as she opened a large red book...
...I turned around to see the Intourist representative from the airport, holding the lost bag and grinning...
...I do not know the telephone number," she said...
...three young men were sitting behind the counter, one reading, the other two smoking and talking with one another...
...He looked at me unbelievingly: "Anytime...
...We walked to the elevator and I heard someone say, "Professor Diamond...
...O how I tried...
...I was afraid that she might tire of such a frustrating conversation and use the easiest method of terminating it, simply saying that no reservation was possible...
...I had forgotten to tell the headwaiter the time at which we wanted to eat, or to ask him the time at which he could receive us...
...She turned to a group of English tourists who were eating at a nearby table and, with much motioning of hand toward us, spoke excitedly to them...
...We may die of hunger before we get there...
...Intourist told me that I should come here to make a reservation for dinner tonight...
...But here the right hand of practice doesn't know what the left hand of theory is doing," I continue—and he laughs...
...But since in principle the theory is always correct, what this proves is that you are not here...
...I asked in Russian...
...I had not overlooked it, and it was missing...
...I threw him a helpless glance, and he shrugged with equal helplessness...
...As "individual tourists" we were forced to wait until the Intourist representative found it possible to deal with us...
...We are going not with this plane...
...Is there anything there...
...This article is an excerpt from In Quest which Columbia University Press will publish next fall...
...I did not know what he was saying, but when I heard the words "tourist," "professor," "Gospozha Brezh-neva," I could guess...
...We found one, not scheduled to open until 8 A.M...
...It is not polite...
...Pinafore...
...A few steps before the door I stopped in sudden despair...
...We waited while the driver made his explanations to the police...
...After all, they know that he does not have to come, so they are grateful when he does come...
...She broke into uncontrollable spasms of laughter...
...you do not have a reservation...
...In principle, yes, but____" Moscow: September 18 The other day we invited one of the American newspaper reporters we met here to have dinner with us...
...She found him in Room 5. He was the man who had first spoken to the waiter when I had arrived—was it days ago?—and who had dashed in and out of the administrator's office while I had been waiting for her...
...I would then be guilty of moral turpitude as well as bourgeois venality...
...I said gallantly that she spoke very well indeed...
...It is now 11:30, and the bus is not here...
...I crawled back to the hotel where 1 found Shirley, bravely holding on despite the visions of Lubianka that had been flitting through her mind during the hours of my absence...
...Meanwhile, the Intourist man was speaking on the telephone...
...No doubt you want to know about the bus, about why it is late...
...This is the first bus of the morning and it's already more than an hour late...
...No," I said—not angrily, though I had lost my smile—"not 23, two or three...
...We had heard that the restaurant in the National Hotel is one of the very best in Moscow, and we decided to eat there...
...The restaurant at the National Hotel is made up of a series of unconnected rooms, and she poked her head into one after another—I just behind her—looking for the headwaiter...
...I am the administrator of this hotel and I tell you that you will not get a room here...
...Just a moment please"—and she closed the book and picked up a pile of notes through which she rapidly shuffled...
...In COMECON countries it would be called "Revolution and CounterRevolution...
...One of my young colleagues, Wesley Fisher, has written a book about the restaurants of Moscow"—I showed her a copy of The Moscow Gourmet which I was carrying—"and he says that the restaurant at the National Hotel is the very best in Moscow...
...This time she dismissed him without even a word...
...She listened to me and said that my wife and I could eat lunch in the airport dining room...
...Then, with mock solemnity, he says: "You are standing here reading the sign which says that the first bus is due at 10:30 am...
...Intourist said I should come here to make the reservation with you...
...then read the first carbon, and stamped it, then read the second carbon and staitiped it, then read the third carbon and stamped it...
...We were up at 6 A.M...
...I stormed back to the hotel and explained the situation to the clerk at the transportation desk who had given us the information that morning about the regularity of the minibuses...
...where they began I do not know, but the one that circulated most frequently were that we were waiting for a group of Pakistanis who had somehow got lost...
...find a spit where a sheep is being roasted and you'll find the Pakistanis...
...That is robbery...
...They stared at me from pictures high up on the walls, from book jackets and magazine covers, from the sleeves of records of his voice, from tapestries and posters and lithographs and wooden plaques...
...A woman from California tapped with her key on the glass door and pointed to a sign saying it was open...
...Is he with his girl friend...
...And I heard myself saying to the two young men, my voice faint and weak, as if it could barely make its way through the dense, viscous medium through which it was traveling: "That's it, keep it up...
...Where is the driver...
...The top of her desk was littered with ink pads and stamps...
...The Intourist desk was in a different part of the building, cagily remote from the passengers...
...How many minutes...
...We drove to another building where, sitting behind a cluttered desk, Mother Russia was dispensing administrative justice to a group of petitioners...
...and I wondered—as I always do on such occasions—whether the deal was not the handing over of some money to guarantee that a reservation would be available and whether I was not missing the boat by not offering to pay something...
...rather than being angry with me, he should be grateful that I was helping to keep his country honest...
...She was as wide as she was tall and almost as thick as she was wide, with high cheek bones and eyes that pierced like lasers...
...The schedule says that the first bus arrives at 10:30 A.M., and theoretically that is quite correct...
...He tried again...
...I told him we had...
...I stood there, frozen immobility concealing the doubts that boiled within, when the administrator entered her office...
...He was a clinical psychologist from Los Angeles, recently widowed, traveling with his sister, and not entirely comfortable with the southern California attitudes and politics of his tour companions...
...Sigmund Diamond is Professor of Sociology and Professor of History at Columbia University...
...The line behind us had grown longer...
...3) nothing can be done to change the information given out at the airport, the hotel, or on the schedule posted at the bus stop...
...she was not there...
...As we were about to enter, a man came through the door, and the two of them spoke briefly...
...The young waiter came by carrying a tray of glasses and looked at me in some surprise...
...Moment followed moment, and still no administrator...
...Neither was she in her office...
...and I have paid them when the price was right and the service important enough...
...for there on a shelf in the candy kiosk were dozens of bronze Lenins, standing, sitting, frowning, smiling, pointing—and all of them looking straight at me...
...At 7:30 I rapped on the door, but there was no response whatever...
...Forty-five minutes later, when the fourth bus was scheduled momentarily to arrive, the first had still not put in its appearance...
Vol. 4 • March 1979 • No. 4
