The Charm School

saw no headlights coming at him and none in his rear mirror, but he still had to resist the urge to floor it. As he drove he realized there were towns and villages ahead, and if there were police in any of them, he would be stopped and questioned.
    Greg Fisher concocted several stories to tell the police, but as plausible as they might sound to him, it didn’t after the fact that the police—either here or in Connecticut—believed nothing you told them.
    The clouds had returned, he noticed, and the night was deep and black with no sign of human habitation on this vast and fabled Russian plain. He had the feeling he was moving through a void, and as the time passed, the sensory deprivation began to work on his mind. He tried to convince himself that what had just happened to him had not happened. But by the time he reached Akulovo, he was left with nothing but the truth. “Jesus Christ… what am I supposed to do?”
    Unwilling to think about it any longer, he popped a tape in the deck and tried to immerse himself in the sound of an old Janis Joplin album. She sang “Bobby McGee” in that deep, husky voice that turned him on. He wondered what she had looked like.
    When Fisher’s mind returned to the road again, he saw a strange, haunting shimmer of light sitting on the black horizon. For some seconds he stared at it, confused and anxious. Suddenly he looked at his clock and odometer, then back at the glow. “Moscow!”
    The Trans Am rolled eastward, and Greg Fisher kept his eyes on the distant lights. Ahead the road dipped beneath a highway bridge, and he knew this was the Outer Ring Road, the unofficial city limits. The road widened to four lanes as it passed beneath the Ring Road. He saw a farm truck coming toward him, its poultry cages empty. Then a bus heading out of the city went by, and he could see by its bright interior lights that it was filled with darkly clad peasants, mostly old women with head scarves.
    Still he saw no signs of urban life along the highway, no suburbs, no streetlights, no signs, only fields of cut grain as though each square meter of earth had to produce something until the moment it was excavated for construction.
    Roads began branching off to the left and right, and in the far distance he could see rows of stark prefab apartment houses, some lighted, some under construction. The previous night in his hotel room in Smolensk, he had spent an hour studying his Moscow map for this approach into the city.
    To his right in the far distance the land rose, and he knew these were the Lenin Hills. Atop the rise was a massive skyscraper with an ornate spire—Moscow State University, where he had intended to check out the coeds. But his plans had turned indefinite.
    Straight ahead up the highway he could see the Triumphal Arch commemorating the Battle of Borodino, and beyond the arch were solid blocks of buildings, like a medieval city, Fisher thought, rural to urban just like that. No Glenwoods subdivisions here.
    The highway passed to the right of the Triumphal Arch, and the Minsk–Moscow highway became Kutuzov Prospect, named after the general of Borodino. Suddenly there were streetlights and vehicles.
    He did not see a sign that said, “Welcome to Moscow,” but that was where he was. With the luck of the damned he had made it, had driven through the countryside after dark in a flashy American car without being stopped. He felt somewhat calmer now that he was mingling into the traffic of Moscow. “So much for the vaunted efficiency of the police state.” He noticed that other drivers were pulling close to him to look at his car. “Go away,” he muttered.
    He drove slowly through Victory Square. To his left was a huge statue of Kutuzov on horseback, and behind that a circular building housing another Borodino museum. “Moscow branch,” he muttered. Fisher felt an unpleasant association with his side trip to Borodino Field. “Goddamned museums… statues… victories… wars…” The Prospect was flanked by solid walls of grey masonry buildings. Fisher pulled up to his first stoplight. People in the crosswalk were looking at his car and license plate, then at him. “Jesus, you people never see a car with Connecticut plates before?”
    Fisher savored the sights and sounds. “Moscow! I’m in Moscow!” He grinned. All the towns and villages from Brest on had been mere hors d’oeuvres. This was the pièce de résistance. The Capital, the Center, as the Russians called it. He