The Charm School

birthday.”
    Hollis replied dryly, “I’d hate to think what these people will come up with next.”
    “Are you really so hard-line, or are you just giving me a hard time?”
    “Neither. I’m just processing information. That’s what I was told to do here.”
    “Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the embassy who is trying to find some good here, some hope. It’s so damned depressing being around cynics, hawks, oily diplomats, and paranoics.”
    “Oh, I know. Look, if we’re going to be friends, let’s cool the politics.”
    “Okay.”
    Again they lapsed into silence. The sky had become gloomy again, and drops of rain streaked across the windshield. There was a sense of quiet oppressiveness in the air, a greyness that entered through the eyes and burrowed its way into the brain, heart, and soul. Lisa said, “Out here, on the plains, I think I understand that legendary Slavic melancholy.”
    “Yes, but you ought to see the endless fields of giant sunflowers in the summer. They take your breath away.”
    She looked at him. “Do they?” Lisa thought that statement told her more about Sam Hollis than Hollis had intended. “You’ll have to show me in the summer.”
    “Okay.”
    “I wish I had a camera.”
    “I’ll stop at the next camera store.”
    “Okay.” She looked at her watch. “Are we going to get to the morgue on time?”
    “If it’s closed, someone will open it.” Hollis suddenly cut the wheel, and the Zhiguli angled off onto a dirt track, fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing.” Hollis took the car around the far side of a
kochka,
one of the small knobby knolls that added small terrain relief to the plains that swept west from Moscow. He brought the Zhiguli to a halt out of sight of the road. Hollis reached back, opened the briefcase on the rear seat, and took out a pair of binoculars, then got out of the car. Lisa followed, and they climbed the grassy knoll to the top. Hollis knelt and pulled Lisa down beside him. He focused the binoculars down the long straight road and said, “I think we’re alone.”
    Lisa replied, “In the States men say, ‘Do you want to go someplace where we can be alone?’ Here they say, ‘I think we’re alone’ or ‘I think we have company.’”
    Hollis scanned the skies, then the surrounding fields. He stood and Lisa stood also. Hollis handed her the binoculars. “Take a look over there.”
    She focused on the eastern horizon. “Moscow… I can see the spires of the Kremlin.”
    Hollis stared out over the harvested farmland. “It was just about here.”
    “What was?”
    “This is about how far the German army got. It was this time of year. The German recon patrols reported what you just said. They could see the spires of the Kremlin through their field glasses.”
    Lisa looked at him curiously.
    Hollis seemed lost in thought for a time, then continued, “The Germans figured the war was over. They were this close. Then God, who probably didn’t care much for either army, tipped the scales toward the Reds. It snowed early, and it snowed heavy. The Germans were freezing, the panzers got stuck. The Red army got a breather, then attacked in the snow. Three and a half years later the Russians were in Berlin, and the world has not been the same since.”
    Hollis turned and watched the sun sinking in the western sky. His back to Lisa, he said as if to himself, “Sometimes I try to understand this place and these people. Sometimes I admire what they’ve done, sometimes I’m contemptuous of what they can’t do. I think, though, that they’re more like us than we care to admit. The Russians think big, like we do, they have a frontier spirit, and they take pride in their accomplishments. They have a directness and openness of character unlike anything I’ve encountered in Europe or Asia, but much like I remember in America. They want to be first in everything, they want to be number one. However, there can only be one number one, and the next number is two.”
    Hollis walked down the knoll and got into the car. Lisa followed and slid in beside him. Hollis pulled back onto the road and continued along the Minsk–Moscow highway. An occasional produce truck passed, going in the opposite direction toward Moscow. Hollis noted idly that the potatoes looked small and the cabbages were black. He saw no other vegetables, no poultry, livestock, or dairy products. He supposed that was worth a short