The Charm School
and fled to France.”
Hollis cracked his boiled egg. He wondered why the government made English so available to school children. A paranoid would say, “So that they can run America someday.” But there had to be more to it than that. He’d actually heard Moscow school children speaking English to one another. Whatever the government’s reasoning was, the students considered it the height of chic.
Maybe, just maybe
, he thought,
there is hope
.
Zina asked in English, “Americans learn Russian?”
“No,” Lisa replied. “Not many.”
“You speak Russian very good. But what region is your accent?”
“Maybe a little bit Kazan, Volga region. A little Moscow. My grandmother’s Russian was old-fashioned, and maybe I still use her accent.”
“A very nice accent,” Zina said. “
Kulturny.
”
Hollis noticed that Pavel and Ida beamed every time one of their children used English. Hollis opened his briefcase to see if his staff had packed any reading material as was customary whenever anyone had to travel in the USSR. He found a
Time
magazine and put it in front of Mikhail and Zina. “This may help you with your English.” He added, “Don’t let it come to the attention of the authorities.”
They both looked at him with an expression that he’d seen before in these situations. There was first a suppressed excitement, then a sort of affected indifference, as though the contraband literature meant nothing to them. Then there was a look almost of shame, a quiet acknowledgment that their government controlled them. It
was
humiliating, Hollis thought.
Mikhail and Zina examined the magazine right down to the staples holding it together. They opened it at random and spread out a two-page color ad for Buick. The next page had an ad for Lincoln. In fact, the magazine was packed with ads for the new car models. There were sexually suggestive ads for perfumes, lingerie, and designer jeans that seemed to hold Mikhail’s interest. Pavel leaned over to get a better look, and Ida stopped what she was doing and stood behind her children.
It was general embassy policy to distribute into the population every Western periodical that came into the embassy. Even if it was mistakenly thrown in the trash, it eventually wound up in the hands of a thousand Muscovites before it fell apart. And though most Muscovites and Leningraders had seen at least one English language publication, Hollis doubted if anyone in Yablonya or the Red Flame collective had.
Hollis noticed that Mikhail and Zina were reading a story about the upcoming elections. Hollis looked at his watch and saw it was just seven. “It’s time for us to go.” He stood.
Mikhail stood also. “It’s my turn to gather the eggs. Excuse me. Thank you.” He left.
Zina helped her mother with the dishes. Lisa tried to help, but Ida told her to have another cup of tea.
Hollis followed Pavel outside. The peasant walked to the far end of his private plot where a small pen held three pigs. He said to Hollis, “The trough leaks water, and I’m tired of carrying buckets from the well.”
“Can you fix the trough?”
“I need some pine pitch or tar. But I can’t get the fools to give me any.”
“What fools?”
“The fools at the collective office. They say they have none. Well, maybe they don’t.” He added, “It’s difficult to get anything for the private plots.”
“Sometimes a hollowed-out log works better for a trough.”
“Yes, that’s true. I’ll need a big log though. I have a good pickax.” He added, “It would be easier if they gave me the tar.”
Hollis asked, “Do you go to church today?”
“Church? There’s no church here. Only in the big cities. I saw an old church once in Mozhaisk, but it’s a museum. I didn’t go in.”
“Did you ever want to go to church?”
Pavel scratched his head. “I don’t know. Maybe if I could talk to a priest I could answer you. I’ve never seen a priest, but I know what they look like from books. Do American farmers go to church?”
“Yes. I’d say most of them do.”
Pavel looked into the sky. “Rain. But maybe snow. See those clouds? When they get soft grey like that instead of white or black, it could be snow.”
Pavel looked out across the brown fields behind his plot. He spoke in that faraway, heavy tone that Hollis had come to associate with their so-called fatalism. Pavel said, “The snow becomes so deep that the children can’t go to school and we can’t leave the
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