The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

I’ll never forget this dinner. I was in a frenzy about what to wear, and I drove Robert into a frenzy too. Do I wear a hat? I asked him. Do I wear gloves? How long should my dress be? What color? He begged me to stop worrying. They are kind people, he said, and they know you’re a simple Russian peasant.

So we came to the party and they passed the martinis and I took one and that was the first cocktail I ever had in my life. In Russia it is not customary to drink before dinner. In an ordinary home everybody just sits and tries to squeeze the conversation and then everybody will be invited to the table and will drink vodka with the food.

So here I am drinking the martini and everybody talking to me in English how difficult is the Russian language and I not understanding scarcely a word. When Robert was courting me he said he would give me some English lessons and he did, but the day we were married, he dropped the lessons dead—not one more lesson. I suppose I was not a very inspiring pupil.

As we drink and talk, a man in a white coat passes a lot of little things to eat—all very nice, but never before have I seen such little things—one bite. and z-zh-ip they’re gone. So I whisper to Robert, “Shall I eat a lot of these little things or will there be something else?”

Then the man in the white coat came and said dinner is served and we got up and went into the dining room. The hostess put me on the right of the host but I did not appreciate the gesture for I was not acquainted with this compliment.

Do you know, before we ate a thing, the man in the white coat took off the plate that was already on the table and put another plate and a bowl with soup in its place? Then he pass the crackers and celery and olives and all those things. This was all easy, but when the second course came I was just ruined.

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Chapter Twenty-Two

For the first time in my life I was served a platter of meat. I was served it even before the hostess because of this damned honor of sitting on the right of the host, so I could not watch her and see what to do. I thought I would just die.

The most I was afraid of was the servants. They were all Russians and the Russians are the most class-conscious of any people. They know I don’t belong at this fancy dinner and they scorn me like I can’t tell you. They really snobbed me. I was all the time like sitting on pins and needles. Poor Robert, he suffered too. He knows how serious I take these things. After the meat came the vegetables. Oh, my back was a hard nut of tense!

Finally, the servants took off everything and I thought thank God! it is over; but then came this last thing, the dessert. It was some kind of ring, a quite fat ring, with a sauce in the middle. I understand now I was supposed to cut a little piece of this one and then take sauce from the inside’ but I cut all the way through this ring and the sauce rushed out and ran all around the platter.

Quickly, the servant jerked it away from me and stomped out of the room, his head high in the air and his eyes looking down his nose. I was so furious I could have struck him between the eyes. Fortunately for the other guests there was a second ring in the kitchen, and in a few minutes he returned with it, but he never approached within three feet of me.

After this torture—I really can’t call it another way—we went back to the living room for coffee. When some time had passed I began once more to enjoy the beautiful life.

I must tell you from that night on I learned pretty fast the American ways. I didn’t know a lot of things. You just can’t imagine. American children learn them like they breathe, but nobody ever told me how to do all kinds of things: how to unfold your napkin (you know, the first dinner I had at Gordon Kashin’s apartment I didn’t use mine at all; I thought it would be terrible to soil its white innocence and I looked at Robert for approval, but afterwards he told me it was put there to use); how to hold your knife and fork; how to serve yourself from a platter.

Robert, of course, noticed when I married him that I didn’t know these things; but he was so kind and gentle he wouldn’t mention them. Now, though, when I insisted on knowing, he told me many things: not to reach across the table for something you wanted, not to eat chicken with your fingers at a formal dinner and so on.

The most complicated thing for me to learn was how to serve myself, so one day I fried a whole chicken and Robert, with a napkin on his hand, just like the man in the white coat, served it on a platter to me. He did it very seriously, not cracking a smile. Then he made me eat what I took with a knife and fork. I tell you it was real work, trying to finish this chicken without doing it naturally with the fingers.

Nila Magidoff, Only to Travel! Only to Live!

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