The Charm School

“Is it true that the banks can take a man’s farm if he does not pay his debts?”
    Hollis replied, “Yes.”
    “What does the man do then?”
    “He… finds a job in town.”
    “What if he cannot find a job?”
    “He receives…” Hollis looked at Lisa and asked, “Welfare?”
    “
Blago,
I think.
Gosstrakh.
”
    Everyone nodded. Another man asked, “What is the penalty for withholding produce?”
    Lisa answered, “A farmer owns all his produce. He can sell it whenever and wherever he can get the best price.”
    The men looked at one another, a touch of disbelief in their eyes. One asked, “But what if he can’t sell it?”
    Someone else asked, “I’ve read that they kill their livestock rather than sell it for nothing.”
    “What if the crops fail? How does his family eat?”
    “What if his pigs or cows all die of disease? Will he get help from the state?”
    Hollis and Lisa tried to answer the questions, explaining they were not that familiar with farm problems. But even as he spoke, Hollis realized that the farm questions were partly metaphor. What the average Russian feared, above all else, was
besporyadok
—chaos, a world without order, a state without a powerful
vozhd,
without a Stalin, a czar-father to look after them. The ancestral memory of such times of disorder, famine, civil war, and social disintegration was strong. They were willing to swap freedom for security. The next step was believing what the government implied: Slavery was freedom.
    Hollis commented to Lisa, “If we were talking to Martian capitalists we’d have more points of common reference.”
    “We’re doing fine. Just stay honest.”
    “When do we tell them to revolt?”
    “After the vodka is gone or after we convince them American farmers all own two cars.”
    A girl of about fifteen sitting on the floor suddenly stood and asked, “Miss, how old are you?”
    Lisa smiled at the girl. “Almost thirty.”
    “Why do you look so young?”
    Lisa shrugged.
    “My mother”—she pointed to a woman behind her who could have been fifty—“is thirty-two. Why do
you
look so young?”
    Lisa felt uncomfortable. She said, “Your mother looks my age.”
    One of the men shouted, “Go home, Lidiya.”
    The girl started for the door but took a deep breath and walked directly to Lisa. Lisa stood. The girl looked at Lisa closely, then touched her hand. Lisa took the girl’s hand in hers, bent down, and whispered in her ear, “There is too much we don’t know about each other, Lidiya. Perhaps tomorrow, if there is time.”
    Lidiya squeezed Lisa’s hand, smiled, and ran out the door.
    Hollis looked at his watch and noticed it was near midnight. He wouldn’t have minded letting this go on until dawn, but that black Chaika prowling the dark roads was on his mind. He said to Pavel, “My wife is pregnant and needs sleep.” Hollis stood. “We’ve kept you all up long enough. Thank you for your hospitality and especially for the vodka.”
    Everyone laughed. The people filed out as they had arrived, in family groups, and each man shook hands with Hollis and mumbled a good-night to Lisa. The women left without formalities.
    Pavel and Ida led Lisa and Hollis through an opening in the kitchen wall curtained off with a quilt blanket. They passed directly into a bedroom, and Hollis realized there was no sitting room. The bedroom held two single cots piled high with quilts, but Pavel motioned them toward a rough pine door, and they entered the second bedroom through the first. This was the end room in the three-room log cabin, and Hollis guessed it was the master bedroom. The middle room was for the son and daughter, who would probably sleep in the kitchen tonight.
    Pavel said, “Here is your bed.”
    The room was lit, as the kitchen had been, by a single bulb hanging on a cord from an exposed log rafter. Heat came from a single-bar electric heater beside the bed. The double bed and two wooden trunks nearly filled the room, and a rag rug covered the plank floor. Hollis noticed spikes driven into the log walls as clothing hooks, and a pair of muddy trousers hung from one of them. There was one window in the short wall that looked into the back garden. Hollis saw there was no furniture other than the bed, though he had noticed in the children’s room a chest of drawers, night table, and a reading lamp. He saw that the partition wall dividing the bedrooms was made of rough-hewn pine boards with knotholes stuffed with newspaper. The