Interlude ^347
subjects, yet whose frame of reference for everything was still the Soviet Union he visited in 1935. "In Russia it's worse. In Russia they do it differently. . . ."
To my surprise, London 's streets had girls who were prettier — as well, of course, as more chic — than Moscow's, and because of Moscow, I moved to pick them up. But I backed down at the last minute. "Pardon me, miss, may I stop you a moment?" would have been a washout on Bond Street. So many elemental things seemed easier in the land of hardship.
And more important. Everyone's fascination for the dominion of enigmas and mystery strengthened my impression that other countries and subjects were irrelevant to life's inner truths. Even Vietnam talk seemed abstract compared to the pull of sadness and escape in Moscow's streets and flats. The heightening of feeling, the jumble of emotion. I kept trying to place the quote — Pushkin? Gogol? — that chugged in my ear: "Oh Russia, how miserable you are, how full of senseless pain and struggle. And how I love you!"
I also felt that Russia owed me something. This sensation never left me, but since I couldn't identify precisely what was due me, I began to calculate that the debt had better be paid in cash. For weeks, I toyed with what had been called, in derision of the fallen Nikita, "hair-brained" schemes for producing some. Write an expose of the joys of Russian girls? Tell Fleet Street what I'd heard about Raya Brezhneva, the boss's "piquant" daughter? One way or another, I had to turn a penny with my inside knowledge.
After three days in a Marble Arch hotel, I moved to a bed-and-breakfast place off the bad end ofWestbourne Grove. Beyond cardboard walls, my neighbors were clusters of Greeks, Indians and Pakistanis harder up than I was and desperate for work permits because of wailing babies. A sign over the peeling portico declared the former Regency town house to be a hotel. The corridor smelled of down-and-out damp, curry cooked on hotplates and a rug tramped by bare feet making for the toilet. Even on sunny days my sheets stayed clammy. Transient London. The landlady claimed it was the rainiest summer since the war.
I might have moved to a better place if it weren 't for my
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misadventure. As it was, I was so broke that supper was two portions of beans on toast in a transport cafe ("kaf") behind Paddington Station. A sHght story attached to the disappearance of my money. Having left Moscow with Uterally the clothes on my back — all shirts, ties, sweaters and T-shirts, everything but my old overcoat, had been distributed to friends —/ made for Oxford Street to stock up on sweaters. My jacket rested on the counter seven seconds while I tried on a turtleneck. The store detective, a lady out of an Alec Guinness movie, said the July sales were Mecca for pickpockets, but that my passport was little use and might be returned. The wallet had contained my summer nestegg; from then on, I had to squeeze by on the bills in my trouser pocket.
In a way, being robbed was liberating. It released me from the urgent missions whispered by every second Russian who'd heard I was going abroad.
"You'll be in London?"
"That's right."
"Please help me, please. We need medicine. "
"What medicine? Where's it manufactured?"
"I don't know exactly. Japan, France — somewhere in the West."
"What's it for, then? The name of the disease."
"I'm not certain. But you must find it. If you don't bring some back, my sister will die."
Being broke also tendered inherent rewards. From Hampstead to the East End docks, I walked London's streets, discharging my nervousness into the padding of perpetual motion. Sausages in pubs cost almost as little as tomatoes in street markets. I got tired; I could sleep. But the most satisfactory part was the matching of my financial circumstances to my position in life. Orwell had the answer to salon Communists telling workers that half a loaf is as good as none at alclass="underline" that type knew zilch about the working class. On the other hand, as Orwell also knew, there were moments of joy in feeling you had nothing to lose. I tasted a tramp's freedom. I spent a pound in Petticoat Lane on an umbrella for the drizzle. It was my walking stick and friend.
Something would turn up; it had to. And did: Joe Sourian 's
InterIudeX349
Betty Vogl. Earlier in the summer, she had visited Joe in Cincinnati, calling him from her hotel room and asking if he had seen The Graduate. Then she was off to London on a two-week BOAC tour. Joe wrote me of this — on Cincinnati University stationery, for he was already an assistant professor there — in case I wanted the pleasure of her company. In the event (as I was learning to say), I had a bath in her room and a supper in her hotel coffee shop. But compared to Joe, she found me thin and listless — the latter, of course, a reflection of what I saw in her. I preferred tramping.
Something else would turn up; my fate was now blessedly out of my hands. What release in semivagabonding, what aspirin for ego-tension! Besides — never mind the contradiction —/ had a terrific plan. I always knew Russia would make me rich.
My miracle-product was Sunday, an unknown Tolstoy novel I'd unearthed in Moscow, which an Erstwhile recommended and I read in a spree when Alyosha was away on a case. Although not quite Anna Karenina or War and Peace, it was certainly profound stuff (and made me rather proud of having coped without a pony).
But what did my opinion matter about a new blockbuster by Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy?! Because I wasn 't in London a week before discovering it had never been translated. A Tolstoy masterpiece, and nobody even knew about it! It clinched my point about Western ignorance of Russia; but even I never dreamed the terra incognita atmosphere extended to classical literature. It took spunky me, living like a native, to dig out a cultural treasure as important as the Tutankhamen relics causing bedlam at the British Museum — and probably more valuable in hard currency. The copyright had surely expired. I'd do a quick translation to establish my rights, then a polished job — and make a crazy fortune.
You never know about life. I hrst realized what I had twenty-one hours after my wallet had been lifted. One accident squashes you; the next one is deliverance. A man in a Russell Square pub who, to my temporary embarrassment, knew much more than I about Russian literature, had never heard of Sunday— so much for his supercilious expertise. I checked Foyles and the Slavonic School. All the other classics were there, from
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Childhood to The Kreutzer Sonata; but mine might never have existed.
The secret sounded in me like Solzhenitsyn 's invocation of the four Beethoven chords. Fabulously rich and famous overnight! Specialists to restore Alyosha; recuperation in stately Riga. Through everything ran my sage insight that this was not blind luck striking, but natural law providing fair compensation. Had I plugged on with work and career in Moscow instead of squandering the year, Vd have missed this supreme opportunity. . . .
To fix the taste of poverty in my memory, I waited another day before calling a publisher. I had to map tactics too: offer world rights in one lump or sell separately in every country? A fund for any living Tolstoys would probably best express my quiet generosity. Then it was time to move. The greatest publishing coup since the Depression was up for grabs.
Which is exactly how I put it to the junior editor whose Bloomsbury basement audience I finally obtained. I reckoned a strong approach would trim wasted time before he brought me upstairs to his chief His Etonian fingers reaching from a pin-striped sleeve to a Russian dictionary behind him was the dart to my bubble. Td had the title absolutely right. But as his forefinger reproved, 'Voskrensenye " translates not only as "Sunday" but also as "resurrection. " While he went out for sherry glasses, I si inked up the stairs.