The Charm School

run.”
    “Is this another itinerary violation?”
    “Quite possibly.” There was not much available light, but Hollis could pick out the dirt and gravel road from the surrounding fields of the famous Russian black earth. Hollis sped up, hitting the brake whenever he saw an intersecting lane and turning onto it. Without brake lights or headlights the Zhiguli was virtually invisible, and after fifteen minutes of random turnings Hollis announced, “We’ve lost the Chaika. Unfortunately
we’re
lost.”
    “No kidding?”
    “Did you notice any Holiday Inns back there?”
    “Way back. Like two years and ten thousand miles back. Say, Sam, you really know how to show a girl a good time. Let
me
buy lunch next time. Okay?”
    “I’m glad you’ve maintained your sense of humor, Miss Rhodes, as vapid as it may be. Well, better lost than dead, I say. I think we’ll pull into a tractor shed and wait until dawn.”
    Lisa shut off the car heater and rolled down her window. “It’s nearly freezing, and it’s only nine o’clock.”
    “It
is
a bit nippy. Do you have long johns?”
    “We have to find shelter, Sam.” She thought a moment, then said, “I think we’re off that state farm by now. If we can find a
kolhoz
—a collective farm village—we can get a peasant to take us in for a few rubles, no questions asked.”
    “No questions asked? In Russia?”
    “A collective is different from a state farm. In a collective village you’ll see Russian peasant hospitality. I’d trust them to keep quiet.”
    “You’ve never even
been
in the countryside. How do you know the peasants are friendly?”
    “Instinct.”
    “Too many nineteenth-century Russian novels, I think.” He shrugged. “All right. I’ll trust you on this.” He added, “You get your wish to see a village sooner than we thought.”
    The road had gone from gravel to dirt and was deeply rutted by farm vehicles. They drove on in a westward direction and within fifteen minutes saw the silhouettes of utility poles against the horizon. They followed the poles and came to the first
izba
of a small hamlet. Hollis slowed the car on the dirt track that ran between two rows of log cabins. He said, “I don’t see any lights.”
    Lisa replied, “It’s past nine, Sam. They’re in bed. They’re peasants. This is not Moscow.”
    “True. In Moscow they turn in at ten.” Hollis stopped the car and looked out the window. “I think we turned left into the last century.” He shut off the engine, and they listened to the dead silence. Hollis got out of the car and scanned the narrow lane. Like most of rural Russia, this village boasted electricity, but Hollis saw no sign of telephone lines nor was there a vehicle in sight or a structure large enough to hold one. There was no evidence that the village even possessed a single horse. It was nicely isolated. Lisa came up beside him, and Hollis said, “They don’t show
this
place to the foreign dignitaries.”
    A light went on in the front window of an
izba,
then a few more lights came on. The door of a cabin opened, and a man stepped out onto a dirt path. Hollis said to Lisa, “You talk.”
    The man approached, and Hollis could see he was somewhere between forty and sixty, wore felt boot-liners, and had probably dressed hastily.
    Lisa said in Russian, “Greetings. We are American tourists.”
    The man didn’t reply. A few other doors opened, and more people came out into the dirt lane.
    Hollis looked around. There were about ten
izbas
on each side of the road, and behind them Hollis could see pigpens and chicken coops. Each kitchen garden was fenced in, and in the corner of each was an outhouse. Ten meters down the lane was a single well and next to it a hand pump. The whole place had a look of extreme neglect about it and made the villages outside of Moscow look prosperous by comparison.
    A crowd of about fifty people—men, women, and children—were standing around Hollis, Lisa, and the Zhiguli now. Hollis said to Lisa in English, “Tell them we come from Earth with a message of peace and to take us to their
vozhd.
”
    She gave him a look of both annoyance and anxiety, then said to the man who had come out first, “We have having car trouble. Can you put us up for the night?”
    The peasants looked from one to another, but amazingly, Hollis thought, there was no sound from them. Finally the peasant she addressed said, “You wish lodgings? Here?”
    “Yes.”
    “There is a state farm not far from