The Last Word
HOCHSCHILD, ADAM
THE LAST WORD Adam Hochschild Moment in the Sun Aforeign visitor rarely gets 10 see much of rural Russia, except from behind the windows of a lour bus. The hotels where Westerners can stay are...
...For a good half hour or so we travel along one of Moscow's broad thoroughfares, largely devoid of traffic, before passing the last of the plain, chunky apartment buildings that spread outward from the city center...
...Please don't bother," 1 say...
...While visiting Moscow with another American, I received a call one Saturday morning from a European friend who has lived in the city for some years...
...On the country roads, there are almost no other cars...
...Lonya and Anna have been planning a shashlik picnic in the woods...
...Wc pass many villagers in their Sunday best—some returning from church, some heading for Easter parties at friends' homes, many carrying bunches of plastic flowers to lay on graves...
...For one transcendent moment it is possible to forget that there are thousands of Soviet missiles aimed at the United States, that there arc thousands of American warheads targeted on this very region around Moscow, that our two governments barely speak, and that in the space of a few minutes our kind hosts and ourselves and everyone else we know and love could vanish as swiftly as paper soldiers in a match's flame...
...No...
...The next day is Russian Easter...
...The hotels where Westerners can stay are almosi all in major cities, and official regulations as well as unofficial fears discourage Soviet citizens from having foreigners in their homes overnight...
...The elaborate, gingerbread frames on their doors and windows are in bright patterns of red, green, and yellow...
...Lonya says...
...Lonya is Armenian, with dark hair and extravagant gestures—he pantomimes a low-bowing waiter while showing us where to park...
...They have no telephone, so there was no way to tell them...
...Together, the two of them run the arts-and-crafts program at a vacation resort for metal workers...
...Local peasants dig up the bodies to look for gold teeth...
...The shashlik is more than enough...
...will be published by Viking...
...Once we tramp through the spring mud to see the skeleton of an Eighteenth Century church that was burned in World War II: The ruins of its brick walls stretch up to a rusty, onion-shaped iron framework that now holds only a patch of blue sky...
...He and his family were going to visit some friends for the weekend: Would we like to come along...
...There are many toasts, with Armenian wine, Russian vodka, and the California wine we have brought...
...Nonetheless, they greet us with warm smiles and handshakes...
...I eagerly took it...
...Anna tells us that Anton Chekhov lived for some years here in Zvenigorod...
...Lonya is distressed that there is no more vodka and says we must go and get some...
...His forthcoming book, "Approaching Home...
...Lonya brings out a guitar, and he, Anna, and their daughter sing lovely ballads of the Soviet poet Bulat Okudzhava, whose wry, sad, distinctly pacifist lyrics have always brought him more popular than official favor...
...nearby is the mass grave of 600 Soviet soldiers who died here...
...So when I recently had the chance to spend a weekend in the countryside...
...Adam Hochschild is a contributing editor of Mother Jones magazine...
...Soon after our arrival, we sit down to a magnificent feast: individual little clay pots of stew—mushrooms, potatoes, lamb— and half a dozen platters of various kinds of salad...
...Our hosts for the weekend, Lonya and Anna S., have been expecting one visiting family, not two additional Americans...
...Lonya speaks no English, and the American friend who is with me no Russian, but both are musicians, and they understand each other perfectly...
...Each of the several small cemeteries wc see is crowded with visitors...
...Both are about forty...
...They sing about a toy paper soldier who insists on going to war and is consumed in the flames of battle...
...1 ask what it is made of...
...As we go from village to village, one after another of the stores we try is closed...
...Anna has reddish auburn hair and classic Slavic features...
...By sleigh and cart, the good doctor must have traveled some of the same roads we have been on today, on his way to treat the poor patients from whom he was often too kind-hearted to collect fees...
...Dizzy with history, we at last find a store with vodka...
...He sings in Armenian, recites heroic poetry in Azerbaijani, and proposes a toast in Russian: "Just as the tender young grape vine is held in place by a strong stick, but one day becomes thicker and stronger than that stick, let us drink to our parents, who supported us in our youth, until we became stronger than they...
...A few hours later, we are heading westward in a small, rugged two-door Soviet car with four-wheel drive...
...Lonya starts a picnic fire at a glade in a forest...
...Lonya, Anna, and their teen-age daughter live in a small one-bedroom apartment in a block of flats reserved for the resort's staff...
...There are painted eggs on the breakfast table, along with btini and homemade blackberry jam...
...The evening ends with the two of them doing an intricate stretch of rapid conga drumming, on table tops, thighs, and finally on each other's backs...
...It feels exhilarating to be linked to such a past, and equally moving to be in such a present, where the communion of a shared meal has triumphantly overcome all barriers of language, culture, and even weather—for beneath the birch and pine trees around us there are still patches of the last winter snow, but the soft leaf carpel we are picnicking on has been heated to comfortable warmth by the sun...
...A short time later...
...After dinner...
...But Lonya turns the odyssey into a tour of this district, Zvenigorod...
...Dog...
...Wc set off in the car to shop for vodka...
...A few miles away are buried 3.000 of Napoleon's soldiers, who died of plague...
...After another half-hour's drive past fields of melting snow, we begin to pass through villages of old wooden houses...
...He points out the riverbank that marked the farthest advance of the German armies toward Moscow in 1941...
...the authorities try to discourage this by spreading rumors that plague germs stay alive for hundreds of years...
...he says, winking, and roars with laughter...
...he says, "shashlik without vodka is like a wedding night without the bride...
...Lonya wears a warm coat of nondescript gray fur...
...Anna, who is a poet, recites some of her verses...
Vol. 50 • May 1986 • No. 5
