All right… I went to Borya Minz, the executive secretary of the newspaper. Told him about my plans. Told him the most exciting details.
Minz said, “What’s his last name?”
I pulled out Yevgeny Eduardovich’s card. “Holiday,” I replied. “Yevgeny Eduardovich Holiday.”
Minz’s eyes grew round. “Holiday? A Russian handyman named Holiday? You’re joking! What do we know about his background? Where did he get a name like that?”
“You think Minz is any better? Not to mention your background…”
“It’s worse,” Minz agreed. “Without a doubt. But Minz is a private individual. Nobody’s writing articles about Minz for Russian Efficiency Day. Minz isn’t a hero. No one’s writing about Minz…”
(I thought to myself: don’t write yourself off!)
He added, “Personally, I have nothing against the English.”
“I should think not,” I said.
I suddenly felt nauseated. What was happening? Everything was not for publication. Everything around us was not for publication. I don’t know where Soviet journalists got story ideas!… All my projects were unrealizable. All my conversations were not for the phone. All my acquaintances were suspicious.
The executive secretary said, “Write about a Heroine Mother.* Find an ordinary, modest Heroine Mother. And with a normal last name. And write two hundred and fifty lines. Material like that will always get through. A Heroine Mother is like a no-lose lottery…”
What else could I do? I was a staff journalist, after all.
I started calling my friends again. A pal said, “Our janitor has a whole horde of kids. Terrible hooligans.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
I went to the address.
The janitor’s name was Lydia Vasilyevna Brykina. No Mr Holiday there! Her living quarters were a horrible sight. A rickety table, a couple of torn mattresses, a stifling stink. Ragged, messy kids everywhere. The youngest yowled in a plywood cradle. A girl of fourteen grimly drew on the window pane with her finger.
I explained the aim of my visit. Lydia Vasilyevna grew animated. “Go ahead and write, dearie… I’ll try. I’ll tell the people everything about my dog’s life.”
I asked, “Doesn’t the state help you?”
“It does. And how! I get forty roubles a month. Well, and the medals and ribbons. There’s a jar full of them on the sill. I’d rather exchange them for tangerines, four to one.”
“What about your husband?”
“Which one? I’ve had a whole troop of them. The last one went out to buy a bottle of rotgut and never came back. Over a year ago…”
What could I do? What could I write about that woman?
I spent a little time there and left. Promised to drop by next time.
I had no one to call. I was thoroughly disgusted. I wondered if I should quit again, find work as a stevedore.
My wife said, “A cultured lady lives across the way. Walks children in the morning. She has about ten of them… Find out… I’ve forgotten her name, starts with Sh…”
“Shvarts?”
“No, no, Shapovalova… Or Shaposhnikova… You can get her name and number from the building office.”
I went to the building office. Spoke to Mikheyev. He was a friendly and kindly man. He complained, “I got twelve jokers working for me, but I got no one to send for a bottle of booze…”
When I began talking about the lady, Mikheyev grew wary .
“I don’t know, talk to her yourself. Her name is Galina Viktorovna Shaporina. Apartment twenty-three. There she is out with the kids. Only I got nothing to do with it. It’s none of my concern.”
I headed for the park. Galina Viktorovna turned out to be a good-looking, respectable woman. In Soviet movies that’s how the people’s assessors* look.
I introduced myself and explained what I wanted. The lady grew tense. She began talking just like our building manager. “What’s the matter? What’s the problem? Why me?”
I was getting sick of this. I put away my pen and said, “Why are you so scared? If you don’t want to talk, I’ll leave. I’m not a hooligan.”
“It’s not hooligans I’m afraid of.” She continued, “You seem like a cultured man. I know your mother and I knew your father. I think you can be trusted. I’ll tell you what it is. I really don’t fear hooligans. I’m afraid of the police.”
“But why are you afraid of me? I’m not a policeman.”
“But you’re a journalist. In my position, drawing attention to myself would be the height of stupidity. Naturally, I’m no Heroine Mother. And the children aren’t mine. I’ve organized something like a nursery school. I teach the children music, French, read poems to them. In state day care the children get sick, and they never get sick here. And I charge moderate fees. But you can imagine what would happen if the police learnt about it. It’s a private school, basically…”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“Then forget I exist.”
“All right,” I said.
I didn’t even bother calling the office. I figured I’d tell them I had writer’s block, if they asked. My fees for December would be symbolic, anyway. Around sixteen roubles. Forget about the suit. Just so they didn’t fire me…
Nevertheless, I did get a suit from the newspaper. A severe, double-breasted suit made in East Germany, if I’m not mistaken. This is how it happened:
I was at the typing pool. The red-haired beauty Manyunya Khlopina said, “Why won’t you invite me to a restaurant? I want to go to a restaurant, but you don’t invite me!”
I offered a weak excuse, “I don’t sleep with you, either.”
“Too bad. We’d listen to the radio together.”
At that moment a mysterious stranger appeared. I had noticed him earlier that day.
He was wearing an elegant suit and tie. His moustache blended into his low sideburns. A miniature leather bag hung from his wrist.
Running ahead, I’ll tell you he was a spy. We simply had no clue. We thought he was from the Baltics. We always took elegant men for Latvians.
The stranger spoke Russian with a barely noticeable accent.
He behaved matter-of-factly and even a bit aggressively. He slapped the editor on the back twice. He talked the Party organizer into a game of chess. He leafed through the technical guidelines in Minz’s office for a long time.
Here I’d like to digress. I am convinced that almost all spies behave incorrectly. For some reason they hide, lie, pretend to be ordinary Soviet citizens. The very mysteriousness of their activities is suspicious. They should behave much more simply. First of all, they should dress as flashily as possible. That instils respect. Secondly, they shouldn’t hide their foreign accent. That instils sympathy. And most importantly, they should act as unceremoniously as possible.
Say a spy is interested in a new ballistic missile. He meets a famous rocketry man at the theatre. He invites him to dinner. It’s stupid to offer the man money. He wouldn’t have enough. It’s stupid to try to work the man over ideologically. He knows all that without anyone’s help.
He has to use a completely different tactic. They should drink. Then he puts his arm around the man’s shoulders. Pats him on the knee and says, “So how’s it going, old man? I hear you’ve invented something new. Why don’t you scribble down a couple of formulas for me on this napkin, just for fun?…”
That’s it. The missile’s as good as in his pocket.
The stranger spent the whole day at the office. We got used to him, even though people gave each other meaningful looks.
His name was Arthur.
So Arthur drops by the typing pool and says, “Excuse me, I thought this is being the bathroom.”
I said, “Come with me. We’re headed the same way.”
In the can the spy looked in horror at our editorial towel. He took out his handkerchief.
We got to talking. Decided to go down to the canteen. From there I called my wife and went to the Kavkazsky restaurant.