The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

“I can even teach you to dance,” I told him and I took his hands and explained. “Now you just make this: one, two, three; one, two, three.” He was a very poor dancer, but I did the complicated part going backwards. The orchestra played “The Blue Danube” waltz as if we especially asked and very soon we found we could go rhythmically together. We never spoke a word; we were so fascinated by the dancing. The evening was perfect. The music; the cold, sharp air; the lights; the gracefully moving people. We felt like we already know each other, for not even conversation can bring people so close together as dancing. Already, I suppose, it was the beginning of love.

When the music stop, we talk. He tells me he is an American, and has come one year to Russia to gather material on Russian folklore; both old and new, and I tell him I’m working on the Journal de Moscou.

Nila Magidoff, Only to Travel! Only to Live!

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Then the music play and we dance again. Then his friends call him. I will remember forever how the woman call, “Robert, come here!” It is the first English I ever remember, “Robert, come here,” and he excused himself and went to talk to them and I just left.

For several days I didn’t go back to the skating rink, but I kept very busy working in the evenings. I understood, maybe, he would come again to skate there and I was afraid of the development of this friendship because he is an American. Hundreds of people, because they were connected with foreigners, were arrested, and so I thought I had better no get involved with him.

Then I was sitting at my desk one day, writing something, and I heard two people come up and this man on the paper said very officially, “Nila, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Robert Magidoff.” Robert asked me for a walk and I forgot all my resolutions and here we go.

After that I began to see him quite regularly. We went dating out to the tee-ater and hiking in the country and skating on the ice rink. Then suddenly an incident happened that almost ruined the romance in the bud. We were walking and a piece of dust came to my eye and there were tears just running. Robert in any circumstance, even on an uninhabited island, will always produce a clean, nice handkerchief. So it happened this time; he produced the handkerchief and gave it to me and I put it around my eye and came home with it, saying, “I will wash it and give it back tomorrow.”

The next day I washed it and put it near the window to dry and the wind blew or something and it went away. I just left the room for one second and when I came back it was gone.

I was horrified. I was sure Robert would think I wanted his friendship just for this fine handkerchief. I went to all the shops to try to find a handkerchief like this; but, my God, the few handkerchiefs I found were made of the roughest material that would tear your nose away. When I asked in one shop if they have a man’s handkerchief the clerk ask, “What, madam?”

“A handkerchief,” I say.

“I’m working here already for ten years,” he say, “and I never heard of a handkerchief.”

I even went to the second-hand stores. Americans would pay a lot with pleasure for the things they could buy in these second-hand stores: pearls, crystals, silver, rubies, diamonds, furs, grand pianos, but, of course, not one handkerchief. The old sheets and the old pillow cases when they would be torn would be used for the nose; a real handkerchief, never.

For days I would not see Robert because of this damned handkerchief. I kept telling him I had work to do and had no time to see him; but one day when I came out of my apartment house there he was waiting. I felt I ought to go through the ground I was so embarrassed. However, I never mentioned

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Chapter Twenty-Two

the handkerchief to him until years later and, of course, by then he had completely forgot it.

It was a long time, though, before I understood a handkerchief like this one was not so important to an American. Because of the terrible shortage of all kinds of consumer things in Russia, I felt a…a…how do you say it?…a awe, but really it was more than a awe, almost a reverence for American goods. The Russian government never considered worthwhile what the people like; it never spends the brain or the money for the bright, attractive things, just the absolute necessary things. It condemned as capitalistic tricks all the miracles of the five-and-ten.

So I admired extravagantly almost everything that Robert had; but one time I admired something that made a big joke. We were going on a picnic and he came with the dark glasses and it was the first time in my life I saw the dark glasses.

“Really, you can see through them?” I asked.