“Depends which Germans. The Weimar crowd, the Social Democrats, don’t like Stalin so much – but their days are numbered. The Junkers, the army, Hitler’s people, the moneymen, they admire how things are being done here. No liberal nonsense about the rule of law. Got to feel sorry for Borodin, now that man with the little moustache is getting stronger.”
“The German conservatives,” said Jones, “people say they’re planning to get rid of Herr Hitler.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Duranty paused. “I need that champagne. Talk of Adolf always makes me thirsty.”
The train clattered along at a stately pace. Soon the fog was lifting, making way for a wine dark sky broken by a brilliant shaft of red light, which fell across muddy streets and brick factories. The city thinned out, then stopped – and, after that, the train cut through endless fields, every now and then passing strings of little wooden shacks so flimsy and fairy-tale they seemed to be made out of gingerbread.
The restaurant car was sumptuous, tables set with white tablecloths and gleaming silver cutlery. Lenin and Stalin looked down from respective oil paintings, Lenin disapproving, Stalin’s mocking smile never leaving his lips.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Duranty boomed, the circus ringmaster, “I give you the only one of us, on his very first day on the Moscow beat, who has the courage, the acrobatic skill, the sheer bloody balls to solve the problem of the great Russian train station queue. You simply jump six feet in the air and hey presto! You’ve beaten everyone to it. Ladies and gentlemen, be upstanding please for our very own amazing acrobat, Mr Gareth Jones of the Welsh Morning Doodah.”
“Western Mail,” Jones corrected, blinking. The company got to its feet, cheering.
“Champagne!” yelled Duranty, and a flurry of waiters appeared with champagne bottles and flutes. “Ladies and gentlemen, a toast, to the Flying Welshman!”
A trio of drinkers at the far end of the restaurant car started to sing “For he’s a jolly good Soviet and so say all of us!”, a song the carriage took up.
Throughout it all, Jones studied his feet, his cheeks burning bright pink – until, at last, the singing ended and Duranty led the way to the end of the carriage, where two wide divans faced each other. Here he made space for himself and Jones between two Russian women, one dark and severe, the other blond and smiling. Opposite them were the three singers. Duranty introduced the men first. “Here are the three wise monkeys of the Moscow press corps. On the left, Lou Fischer of the Baltimore Sun. Lou has a few skeletons in his cupboard but nothing the Kremlin doesn’t know about.”
Fischer, a thick-set, fleshy man, opened his mouth but no sound came out.
“In the middle, Eugene Lyons, United Press. Gene’s got so many skeletons you can’t fit them into any cupboard.”
Lyons grinned feebly. Short, well-dressed, with a mop of unruly light brown hair, he sported a broken nose and a thoughtful face.
“And the third monkey, Linton Wells, International News Service. He’s just a skeleton.”
Wells had the look of a greyhound no longer raced for money. He eyed Jones soulfully.
“Boys and girls,” Duranty continued, “don’t be fooled by the spectacles and the shyness. He’s a young little owl, our Mr Jones, but he’s up for the right kind of trouble, aren’t you, eh Jonesy? Twit-twoo? He’s the owl and maybe one of you two girls are going to be his pussycat? The owl and the pussycat, eh? Natasha? Evgenia?” He pointed in turn to the smiling blond and the gloomy brunette. “Natasha is pure Russian but Evgenia’s from Kiev.”
“Stalino,” replied Evgenia, curtly.
“Where’s Stalino?” asked Jones.
“South of here,” replied Duranty, “in Soviet Ukraine. Coal town. A dump.”
Evgenia showed her teeth, white and sharp. It could have been a smile.
“Vot is owl and puzzycad?” asked Natasha, leaning forward to get a light for her cigarette from Lyons. As she did so, she held herself steady by resting the fingernails of her left hand on Jones’ thigh. Her hair was done in bangs, with a black choker around her neck, red stiletto shoes and a black spangly dress, short for Moscow, short for anywhere. Cigarette lit, she leaned back and blew out a halo of blue smoke.
“The Owl and the Pussycat is a nonsense poem of interest only to people like Mr Duranty, who think nonsense clever,” said Evgenia. The voice was soft and hesitant, yet somehow it carried a spirit of resistance to Duranty’s power over the company.
While Natasha was sporting the very latest Parisian fashion, Evgenia could not have been more plainly attired. She wore a dark brown dress that went to her ankles and plain black boots. She had long dark brown hair to the waist, a sallow face and perhaps the darkest brown eyes Jones had ever come across. Jones noticed that she seemed to be surveying the world with her head slightly turned away but with her eyes looking back, as if she struggling against a physical compulsion to be somewhere else entirely. He found himself staring at her and she returned his gaze steadily, until, embarrassed, he looked away. She was uncommonly beautiful.
“Bravo old girl, bravo!” said Duranty. “Now I need more nonsense juice. Champagne! A man could die of thirst here. What’s the point of having a revolution if a worker can’t have a drink when he needs one?”
He stood up, not so steady on his feet, and bawled at a waiter fussing over a dining table at the other end of the carriage, “More champagne, if you please!” Then he sank back on the divan and moaned, softly, to himself, “Service in Russia is not what it used to be, said the Tsar to the Tsarina.”
The waiter, an elderly silver-haired man with kind eyes, vanished and returned within seconds, bearing three bottles of Veuve Clichy and seven fresh champagne flutes. He popped a cork, spilling not a sip, and then poured the drinks. “What’s your name, comrade?” Duranty asked him.
“Comrade Gazdanov, comrade.”
“We’re all equals here, comrade. Comrade Gazdanov, can you get us poor workers some caviar and blini with sour cream, please. A man’s got to eat.” Duranty patted his stomach. The waiter nodded and departed.
Soon, Oumansky joined them, sitting on the edge of the divan with the three newspapermen, his neck craning this way and that, never at rest.
“So, Jonesy, what’s your prize here?” asked Duranty, his eyes full of laughter. “What are you going to do in Mother Russia to make your name?”
The train clattered over a signal and the carriage swung drunkenly this way and that. Natasha reached out for Jones’ thigh to steady herself, again, but when the carriage righted itself it stayed there.
“What do you suggest?” Jones replied.
“My readers,” said Duranty, “are ordinary people, the salt of the American earth and they’re interested in only three things. If you knock out a story that combines all three, you’ll do fine.”
“What are they?” asked Jones.
“Sex, blood and gold,” Duranty repeated the phrase, relishing it. “You want to make your name as a newspaperman, you write about those three and not much else.”
Jones smiled, coughed and said, “May I ask, what’s the GPU?”
Natasha removed her hand. The bright lights of the carriage died, leaving their faces bathed in the reddening light. A silence prickled.
“Why do you ask that?” said Lyons, eventually.
“I came across a British engineer in my hotel, a Mr Attercliffe from Sheffield. He translated a phrase for me that was being repeated by the loudspeakers, ‘the liquidation of cowlessness’. I told him that it was gibberish and he said that I should watch what I say, lest the GPU hear about it. He pronounced it Gay-Pay-Ooo. Attercliffe wouldn’t tell me. So what's the GPU?”
“Haha,” snorted Duranty, recovering first, “good question, my young owl. No better question here in the Soviet Union. Lyons, are you going to tell him? You’re the expert on them. Or is it the other way round?”