excerpt
were speaking with a Texan in a curious mixture of Russian and stilted English.
“What’s happening?” asked David, pulling up a chair and offering one to Maria.
“Ah don’t know,” the man drawled. “I was just sittin’ here in the lounge with a beer when these two guys started telling me about their factory.” He shook his head. “I think I’ll leave y’all to it. Dosvidanya.”
Paul was already seated at a table with two of the women guests. He was feeling an unusual sense of power. Even before Natasha’s commanding announcement, he had watched the bus arrive at the wharf and disgorge the group of mostly men, some women, chosen for the day as ambassadors. He had seen them chattering nervously then falling silent as they approached the gangplank. He had noticed two of the women especially and had made a point of sitting with them as soon as they entered the lounge. They introduced themselves as Nadezhda Ivanovna, a political commissar, and Vera Fyodorovna, a factory worker. Nadezhda was tall, plump and ungainly, maybe forty years old, he guessed. Her eyes roamed the room as she reeled off statistics: the depth of the Volga River at this point, how many centimetres of rainfall in June, the population of Toglyatti, how their car factory had fulfilled the Plan. Paul learned that the city had been named after the leader of the “Italian comrades” who had arrived en masse after the war to teach the Soviets how to make the Fiat. Now dubbed the Zhiguli, the little cars were popular and could only be acquired after placing one’s name on a waiting list.
“And do you work on the assembly lines, Vera?” he asked the other woman who sat quietly nodding. She was dark-haired and shapely, and Paul could have sworn that once—as Nadezhda was droning on about the Five Year Plan—the young woman had winked at him.
“Yes, I was born to a farmer but now I am happy to work for the socialist state at the factory,” she replied blandly. As she spoke, her face took on the detached look of what he had come to think of as a protective screen, the Soviet public face that masked the thoughts within.
She reached for the open bottle of soda on the table and offered it around politely. “But please, I want to hear about your country,” she went on before Nadezhda could wind up again. “Where is your home? What do you study?”
Paul leaned forward to tell her. Nadezhda excused herself reluctantly in order to pay her respects to the student “leader,” Natasha.
Libros Libertad 