The canal, no more than a snow ditch, was a sporting ground for children whose laughing shrillness combined with a ringing of bells, both sounds carrying on the strong, shivery winds that blow from the Bay of Finland. Skeleton trees, sheathed in ice, glittered against the austere fronts of palaces that lined the embankments and stretched to the distant Nevsky Prospekt. Leningrad, currently a city of four million, the Soviet Union’s second largest and northernmost metropolis, was built to the taste of the Czars, and Czarist taste ran to French and Italian architecture, which accounts not only for the style but also for the coloring of the palaces along the Neva and in other old quarters. Parisian blacks and grays predominate, but suddenly, here and there, the hot Italian palette intervenes: a palace of bitter green, of brilliant ocher, pale blue, orange. A few of the palaces have been converted into apartments, most are used for offices. Peter the Great, who is given high marks by the current regime because he introduced the sciences to Russia, would probably approve the myriad television aerials that have settled like a swarm of metal insects on the roofs of his once imperial city.
We crossed the bridge and wandered through opened iron gates into the deserted courtyard of a blue palace. It was the beginning of a labyrinth, an arctic Casbah where one courtyard led into another via arcades and tunnels and across narrow streets snow-hushed and silent except for sleigh horses stamping their hooves, a drifting sound of bells, an occasional giggle from the twins, still trailing behind us.
The cold was like an anesthetic; gradually I felt numb enough to undergo major surgery. But Miss Ryan refused to turn back. She said, “This is St. Petersburg, for God’s sake. We’re not just walking anywhere. I want to see as much as I can. And I’d better. From now on, you know where I’ll be? Locked in a room typing a lot of nonsense for the Breens.” But I saw that she couldn’t last much longer, her face was drunkard-red, a frostbite spot whitened the tip of her nose. Minutes later, feeling its first sting, she was ready to seek the Astoria.
The trouble was, we were lost. It amused the twins greatly to see us rotating around the same streets and courtyards. They screeched and hugged each other with laughter when we came on an old man chopping wood and begged him for directions by swinging our arms like compass needles and shouting, Astoria! Astoria! The woodchopper didn’t understand; he put down his ax and accompanied us to a street corner, where we were required to repeat our pantomime for three swarthy friends of his, none of whom got the point, but nevertheless beckoned us up another street. On the way, out of curiosity, we were joined by a gangly boy carrying a violin case, and a woman who must have been a butcher, for over her coat she was wearing an apron splattered with blood. The Russians babbled and argued; we decided they were taking us to a police station, and neither of us cared, as long as it was heated. By now the moisture in my nose had frozen, my eyes were unfocused with cold. Still, I could see well enough to know that abruptly we were back at the Neva Canal footbridge. I wanted to grab Miss Ryan’s hand and run. But she felt our entourage had been so faithful they deserved to see the mystery solved. From woodchopper to violinist, the procession, led by the twins, who skated ahead like pied pipers, convoyed us across the square and straight to the Astoria’s entrance. While they surrounded one of the Intourist limousines that stay parked in front of the hotel, and began to question its chauffeur about us, we rushed inside, collapsed on a bench and sucked the warm air like divers who have been too long underwater.
Leonard Lyons walked by. “Looks like you’ve been out,” he said. Miss Ryan nodded, and Lyons, lowering his voice, asked, “Anybody follow you?”
“Yes,” said Miss Ryan, “crowds.”
A company bulletin board had been installed in the lobby. Attached to it were announcements concerning the company’s rehearsal schedule, and a list of entertainments their Soviet hosts had planned for them, which included, in the days before the première, ballet and opera performances, a ride on the new Leningrad subway, a visit to the Hermitage Museum, and a Christmas party. Under the heading PROMPTLY, the dining hours had also been posted, and these, influenced by the fact that in the Russian theater matinèes start at noon and evening performances at eight, were listed as: Breakfast 9:30 A.M., Lunch 11:00 A.M., Dinner 5 P.M., Evening snack 11:30 P.M.
But at five on that first evening, I was enjoying a hot tub too much to bother about dinner. The bathroom, which belonged to the third-floor room assigned to me, had peeling sulphur walls, a cold radiator and a broken toilet that rumbled like a mountain brook. The tub itself, circa 1900, was splotched with rust stains, and the water that poured from its taps was brown as iodine; but it was warm, it made a wonderful steam, and I basked in it, idly wondering if downstairs in the bleak dining room the company were at last being treated to caviar and vodka, shashlik, blinis and sour cream. (Ironically, as I learned later, they were receiving the same menu that had been served at every meal on the train: yogurt and raspberry soda, broth, breaded veal cutlets, carrots and peas.) My waterlogged drowsing was interrupted when the telephone rang in the outer room. I let it go awhile, the way you might if you were sitting in a bath at home. Then I realized I wasn’t home, remembered that, looking at the telephone earlier, I’d thought what a dead object it was to me in Russia, as useless as if the wires were cut. Naked and dripping, I picked up the receiver to hear the interpreter, Miss Lydia, telling me I had a call from Moscow. The telephone was on a desk next to the window. In the street below, a regiment of soldiers marched by singing a military song, and when Moscow came through I could hardly hear for the robust boom of their voices. The caller was someone I’d never met, Henry Shapiro, a United Press correspondent. He said, “What’s going on there? Anything’d make a story?” He told me he’d been intending to travel to Leningrad for “the big story,” the Porgy and Bess première, but now he couldn’t because he had to cover “another opening,” the Supreme Soviet, which was happening in Moscow the same night. He would therefore appreciate it if he could call again on Monday after the première and have me report to him “how it went, what really happened.” I said all right, I’d try.
The call, and the shock of standing unclothed in a cold room, had brought me back to life. The company were expected to attend a ballet, and I started to get dressed for it. There was a problem here. The Breens had decreed that the men should wear black-tie, and the ladies short evening dresses. “It’s more respectful,” said Mrs. Breen, “and besides, Robert and I like everything to be gala.” There was an opposing clique who felt that the Breens’ pronouncement would, if obeyed, make them look “ridiculous” in a country where no one dressed formally for any occasion whatever. I compromised by putting on a gray flannel suit and a black tie. While dressing, I moved around the room straightening some of the fruit and flower paintings that clotted the walls. They were rather atilt, owing to an inspective visit from Leonard Lyons, who was convinced the Astoria’s rooms were wired for sound. Lyons’s theories were shared by most of the company, which was not remarkable, considering that the two American diplomats from the Moscow Embassy had told them at a briefing in Berlin that during their Russian visit, they should “assume” their rooms would be wired and their letters opened. Even Breen, who called the diplomatic advice “a lot of blah,” had unwittingly encouraged the company’s suspicions by declaring that regardless of what anyone might individually feel, he hoped in correspondence they simply would write how “interesting” Russia was and what a “good time” they were having; this, some pointed out, was a contradiction, for why would Breen make such a request if he, too, didn’t believe they were living in an atmosphere of microphones and steam kettles?
On my way out, I stopped at the floor desk and handed my key to the guardian, a plump pale woman with a Kewpie-doll smile who wrote in her ledger 224-1900: the number of my room and hour of departure.
Downstairs, there was a row in progress. The company, dressed and ready to leave for the ballet, stood around the lobby like mortified figures in a tableau, while one of the cast, John McCu
rry, a husky bull-like man, stomped about yelling, “Goddamn if I will. I’m not gonna pay any goddamn crooked somebody seven bucks fifty to baby-sit anybody.” McCurry was complaining of the price a Russian baby-sitter was charging to stay with his four-year-old daughter while he and his wife went to the ballet. At a cost of thirty rubles per sitter, Intourist had supplied a batch to all the parents of the troupe’s six children; they had even arranged one for Twerp, the boxer puppy belonging to the production’s wardrobe mistress. Thirty rubles, at the exchange of four to one, amounts to $7.50, a stiff tariff; but actually, to the Russians, thirty rubles has a buying power equivalent to $1.70, and the Russians, who had only this modest fee in mind, couldn’t fathom why McCurry was causing such a scene. Savchenko, head man from the Ministry of Culture, was rosy with indignation, Miss Lydia white. Breen spoke sharply to McCurry, and McCurry’s wife, a shy woman whose eyes are usually downcast, told him if he would please be quiet, she would remain home with the child. Warner Watson and Miss Ryan hustled everyone out of the lobby and onto the two buses that had been chartered for the duration of their Leningrad stay.
Later, Breen apologized to Savchenko for the “conduct” of a few members of the company. The apology was intended to cover more than the McCurry incident. Free liquor was not included in the contract that had been drawn up between the Ministry of Culture and Everyman Opera, Inc. Savchenko was distressed because several persons had ordered drinks brought to their rooms and refused to pay for them, fought and insulted the waiters. Further, it had come to Savchenko’s attention that many of the Americans were referring to him and his staff as “spies.” Breen, too, felt that this was “unwarranted and outrageous,” and Savchenko, in accepting his apologies, said, “Well, of course, in a company this size, we must expect some who will fall below the mark.”
The ballet was at the Mariinsky theater, which has been renamed, though no one calls it that, the Kirov, after the old revolutionary and friend of Stalin’s whose assassination in 1934 is said to have initiated the first of the Moscow trials. Galina Ulanova, the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina, made her debut in this theater, and the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Company, which is now installed there on a repertorial basis, is considered first-class by Soviet critics. Except for the Fenice in Venice, a theater it somewhat resembles in its eighteenth-century size and style and heating system, I think it the most beautiful theater I’ve seen. Unfortunately, the old seats have been replaced by wooden ones, rather like those in a school auditorium, and their harsh, natural color makes too raw a contrast against the subtle grays and silvers of the Mariinsky’s simplified rococo interior.
Despite the chilliness of the theater, all of us, ladies included, were required to leave our coats at the cloakroom; even Mrs. Gershwin was forced to part with her mink, for in Russia it is thought uncultured, nye kulturni at its extremest, to enter a theater, restaurant, museum, any such place, wearing a coat or wrap. At the moment, the principal sufferer from the ruling was Miss Ryan. A tall, striking blonde, Miss Ryan was wearing a low strapless dress that hugged her curves cleverly; and as she swayed down the aisle, masculine eyes swerved in her direction like flowers turning toward the sun. For that matter, the entrance of the entire company was creating a mass stir in the crowded audience. People were standing up to get a better view of the Americans and their black ties, silks and sparkles. Much of the attention was centered on Earl Bruce Jackson and his fiancée, Helen Thigpen. They were sitting in the Royal Box, where a hammer-and-sickle blotted out the Imperial crest. Jackson, lolling his hand over the edge of the box so that his jewelry, a ring on every finger, could be seen to advantage, was slowly inclining his head right and left, like Queen Victoria.
“I’d be freezing, if I weren’t so embarrassed,” said Miss Ryan, as an usher seated her. “Just look, they think I’m indecent.” One couldn’t deny that there was a touch of criticism in the glances Miss Ryan’s bare shoulders were receiving from surrounding Russian women. Mrs. Gershwin, who was wearing a becoming green cocktail dress, said, “I told Wilva Breen we shouldn’t get all dressed up. I knew we’d look ridiculous. Well, darling, never again. But really, what should we wear?” she asked, looking about as if hunting fashion hints among the audience’s melancholy, shapeless attire. “I didn’t bring anything that wasn’t pretty.”
Sitting in the row ahead, there was one girl whose hair was neither plaited nor a sour bundle of string; she had an urchin-cut, which suited her curious, wild-faun face. She was wearing a black cardigan and a pearl necklace. I pointed her out to Miss Ryan.
“But I know her,” said Miss Ryan excitedly. “She’s from Long Island, we went to Radcliffe together! Priscilla Johnson,” she called, and the girl, squinting near-sighted eyes, turned around. “For God’s sake, Priscilla. What are you doing here?”
“Gosh. Gee whiz, Nancy,” said the girl, rubbing back her tomboy bangs. “What are you doing here?”
Miss Ryan told her, and the girl, who said that she too was staying at the Astoria, explained that she had been granted a lengthy visa to live in the Soviet Union and study Russian law, a subject that had interested her since Radcliffe, where she’d also learned the Russian language.
“But, darling,” said Mrs. Gershwin, “how can anyone study Russian law? When it changes so often?”
“Gosh. Ha ha,” said Miss Johnson. “Well, that’s not the only thing I’m doing. I’m making a kind of Kinsey report. It’s great fun, gosh.”
“I should think,” said Miss Ryan. “The research.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Miss Johnson assured her. “I just keep steering the conversation toward sex; and gee whiz, you’d be surprised what Russians think about it. Gosh, Nancy, the number of men who have mistresses! Or wished they did. I’m sending articles to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. I thought they might be interested.”
“Priscilla’s a sort of genius,” Miss Ryan whispered to me, as chandeliers dimmed and the orchestra conductor raised his baton.
The ballet, in three acts with two intermissions, was called Corsair. The average Soviet ballet is far less concerned with dancing than with stupendous production, and Corsair, though a minor work in their repertory, involves as much change of scenery as the extravagant vaudevilles at Radio City Music Hall or the Folies Bergère, two theaters where Corsair would feel quite at home, except that the choreography and its execution are not up to the standards of the former, and the latter would never tolerate a scene of dancing slave girls swathed to the neck. The theme of Corsair is very similar to The Fountains of Bahchisarai, a poem of Pushkin’s that the Bolshoi ballet has taken and swollen into one of its prize exhibits. In Fountains, an aristocratic girl is kidnaped by a barbaric Tartar chieftain and hauled off to his harem, where, for three hours of playing time, many vile adventures befall her. In Corsair, this girl’s twin sister undergoes somewhat the same ordeal; here she is the victim of a shipwreck (brilliantly simulated onstage with thunder, lightning, torrents of water crashing against the stricken vessel) who is captured by pirates, after which, for three hours, ditto. Both these tales, and countless like them, reflect a tendency in the contemporary Soviet theater to rely on fantasy and legend; it would seem that the modern author who wishes to roam beyond the propagandist garden finds that the only safe path is the one that leads him into the forest of fairy stories. But even fantasy needs realistic underpinning, reminders of the recognizable, the human; without them, the power of life is not there, nor is art, a dual absence that occurs too often in the Soviet theater, whose practitioners appear to believe that trick effects and technical wizardry can be made to supplant them. The Ministry of Culture frequently boasts that Russia is the sole country to have produced an art-culture en rapport with its population. The reaction of the audience to Corsair was nothing to disprove the claim; every set, every solo brought chandelier-shaking rounds of applause.
The Americans were enthusiastic too. “Magnificent, a dream,” Mrs. Breen told Mrs. Gershwin during an intermission spent in the Mariinsky’s café-s
alon. The opinion was seconded by her husband. Yet while praising the ballet, Breen, a dapper man whose facial expressions alternate between boyish beamings and Buster Keaton calm, had a troubled flickering in his eyes, as though perhaps he was comparing the physical elaborateness of Corsair with Porgy and Bess’s three simple changes of scenery; if lavish effects were the criterion, then Soviet audiences were certain to be disappointed with his production.
“Well, I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Gershwin rebelliously, as the Breens moved on to another group. “I can hardly keep awake. And I’m not going to say I like it if I don’t. They [the Breens] would put the words in your mouth if they could.” That, of course, was the difficulty of the Breens’ position. Like parents who have taken their children on a visit to the neighbors, they lived in dreadful anticipation of gaffes, of breakage and misconduct.
Refreshments were on sale in the Mariinsky’s café-salon: beer, liqueurs, raspberry soda, sandwiches, candy and ice cream. Earl Bruce Jackson said he was starving: “But, man, that ice cream costs a dollar a lick. And guess what they want for a little bitty piece of chocolate not big as your toe? Five-fifty.” Ice cream, advertised by the Soviets to be a delicacy of their own contriving, started to become a national passion in the U.S.S.R. in 1939, when American machinery was imported for its making. Most of the customers jammed into the salon stood spooning it out of paper cups while watching the Americans pose for photographs, informal ones, balancing beer bottles on their foreheads, demonstrating the shimmy, doing imitations of Louis Armstrong.
At the second interval I looked for Miss Ryan and found her backed into a corner, haughtily smoking a cigarette in a long holder and trying to pretend she was not the cynosure of puffy girls and leaden-faced women gathered to giggle and comment on her clinging gown and naked shoulders. Leonard Lyons, standing with her, said, “See, now you know how Marilyn Monroe feels. Would she be a wow here! She ought to get a visa. I’m going to tell her.”