The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

He disappears into the chief’s office and in about three minutes he returns and say most politely, “Will you come back in a week? In the meantime you will sign this paper that you will not leave Moscow until after the second interview.”

The week seemed interminable, but when I returned I was received immediately by the chief officer and he say, “The most horrible thing has happened. It’s all a terrible, terrible mistake your being asked to come here.” And he takes the summons with my name written on it and tears it in little pieces. “I most humbly apologize for such a stupid blunder.”

“You mean I’m free?” I say, scarcely able to believe my ears.

He laugh like an amateur on the stage, ‘Ho, ho, ho,” and say, “Of course. Of course. You can travel where you wish—that is inside the Soviet Union. And I do hope you will try to explain to your husband it was all a mistake.”

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Chapter Twenty-Two

“I will do my best,” I say in the meanest way. “He is downstairs now, waiting for me.”

As I went out, the man in the other office, who spoke so rough to me the first time, run and open the door, but God! I didn’t even notice him.

On the street just where I left him, Robert is standing, and I run to him and put my arms around him and cry, “I’m free! I’m free! I can go any place!”

After this, especially after we get the room with Gordon Kashin, is the most happiest time. It was the first time anybody take care of me. You American woman will not understand this for you are accustomed to the husband taking care of the woman, being sorry for you when you have the headache, getting a wrap for you when you are cold, asking when he comes home in the evening, “Darling, what have you being doing with yourself today?” and inviting you out for special suppers now and then; you know, showing the attention in all these little things. Well, I never experienced it before and I just bask in it with such a pleasure. It was pure and untouched happiness.

Then Robert became assistant to the chief of the AP Bureau in Moscow and went to the United States for a short visit. While he was gone I was telephoned to from the Russian Foreign Office, where we I had applied for an apartment for a long time, that they had an apartment for us. I thought, of course, it would be a room and a bathroom, but my God, it was three rooms. I sent Robert a cable, “We got apartment,” and in just two weeks he came rushing back with boxes loaded with things because the apartment was completely empty except for the most necessary furniture.

Robert had bought dishes and silver and the most terrific kitchen things— the things to turn the eggs, the pot to make the coffee, the beater to beat the eggs and frying things. Oh, to unpack it! Nothing will ever compare with unpacking these boxes. Never before did Robert like to shop, but he tell me that every time he bought something, even the can opener, he saw my happy face. There was only one disappointment. Robert has very plain taste and he bought very plain dishes. I want them all colors with big flowers.

The best thing he bought was the electric toaster with the pumping bread. Wonderful is not the word! I telephoned all my Russian friends—by this time the arrests and trials had subsided—and I said to them, “Please do come for American toast!” I ask husbands too. Everybody. When they came I put the toaster on an oval table in the middle of the room. I put two pieces of bread in it and then everybody sat around and waited.

Then z-zh-ip the toast pumped up! Ah-h-h, there is no way to express my friends’ faces; their childish happiness at this miracle thing. Then I buttered the two slices and passed them around and here we went again. Everybody waited, scarcely breathing. Then z-zh-ip and two more slices. I’m really afraid to say how much we ate of this amazing American toast. It sounds un-

Nila Magidoff, Only to Travel! Only to Live!

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believable; but we spent the whole evening around this toaster and everybody eat five or six slices—about ten pounds of bread in all.

I remember I wore for the toasting a housecoat with a zipper that was going from the knee up to the neck, which Robert had also brought from America. I had never seen a zipper like this before and, naturally, none of my Russian friends had. Robert said the coat was just to wear around the house when there was no company but I thought it was absolutely beautiful—it was long to the floor with a little train in back. The guests simply adored the zipper. Poor souls, they were so fascinated with the zipper zipping and the toast pumping they were in a state of complete exhaustion by the time they went home.

Robert felt I should go around with Americans more. When we went ice skating and saw Americans, he would bring me up to them and introduce me as his wife. Soon one of these couples invited us to dinner.