The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Kunavin’s assistants brought in a new little Grundig tape recorder and some jazz recordings. (It’s amusing to note that this tape recorder was owned by one of Kunavin’s co-workers by the name of Enver, who had not long before returned from abroad, working in the KGB First Sector, and had, of course, stocked up well. He begged me to assure him that I would be the only one to turn the tape recorder on and off, to make sure it wouldn’t get broken.)

Kunavin spread out his agents, blond men with tousled hair sporting identical dark blue suits, on all floors of the restaurant. He himself, in a new dark blue suit paced up and down the fourth-floor corridor, where the Rotonda was located. The table was set for a tsar. The entire operation at the Praga Restaurant most likely ran the KGB around 1000 rubles in pre-reform currency. After all, there were ten people present: Mdivani and his wife, Lida, Nadia, Lora (Larisa), myself, along with two French couples, De Jean and Gerard.

I met our guests below in the restaurant lobby by the Vorovsky Street entrance and took the elevator to the fourth floor with them.

The evening went superbly. Our rapport with the ambassador himself was firmly established. New people entered the game. Maurice, of course turned his attention to the three Russian beauties: Khovanskaia, Cherednichenko, and Kronberg-Sobolevskaia. He began to treat me with marked goodwill. As for Marcel Gerard, he emulated his boss in every respect. It was clear that Marcel was Maurice’s protégé. (I later learned from Vera Ivanovna that they were somehow distantly related). In any case, the advisor of cultural affairs wrote down our home telephone numbers, invited everyone to come see him at the embassy, and in every way exhibited a favorable disposition.

At first impression (and even afterwards), Marcel Gerard appeared to me to be a person agreeable in all respects, though spiritually limited, a civil servant. I know that he even wrote a book about the USSR and furnished it with a multitude of photographs. But I’m certain that, while having spent several years in the Soviet Union, Marcel saw only the superficial, that which was put on for show, and was never able to penetrate the life of our people—and perhaps never even tried. The blinders of the embassy careerist and of the well-to-do French bourgeois prevented him.

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Chapter Thirty-One

The evening in the Rotonda, as I’ve said before, went splendidly and brought me closer to the ambassador. Maurice acted the part of the worldly playboy easily and naturally. He flirted with the ladies, danced with them, and was gallant and witty. I should also mention that the ambassador had a sense of humor, though that humor was sometimes a little crude and always contained sexual overtones. During his anecdotes the ladies had to modestly lower their eyes, and Marie-Claire, knowing her husband’s weakness, usually tried to interrupt him or loudly and deliberately laughed in the risqué places, in order to drown out certain words with her laughter. But Maurice reached his goal by repeating them several times, his eyes narrowing and becoming two tiny slits. His cheeks became rounder, and he laughed at his own jokes soundlessly, only with his lips.

The tamada—that is, the master of ceremonies—was, of course, Zhorzh Mdivani, a Georgian, merry and grandiloquent. He masterfully made the toasts: political, ideological, patriotic, lyrical, and so on. We conversed in three languages: Russian, French, and English. And Maurice, Marie-Claire, and Marcel Gerard began to use their Russian. Upon parting, Maurice invited us all to the embassy for dinner. This was exactly what Gribanov had been after.

After we left, Kunavin’s agents filtered into the Rotonda, as he told me afterwards. Lora Kronberg-Sobolevskaia stayed behind with them. After all, someone had to finish up the food and (more importantly) the drink. And the vodka, cognac, and wine were more than plentiful. The revelry of the “plebeians” went on until dawn, so riotously that one of the agents, either Lora, or the “waiter” had his watch lifted. In the end, Kunavin had to deal with this scandalous affair.