The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

At the meeting at the Rotonda I had personally become convinced that the ambassador had an Achilles’ heel, and that heel was the opposite sex. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in my report, that evening Maurice did not show a specific preference for any one of our three young ladies. He was, so to speak, equally disposed towards all of them. The KGB offered him a choice: take one, don’t be shy, but apparently had had decided not to hurry. My job was to connect the ambassador with the lady he would “point to,” and facilitate his liaison with her, taking into account all of the difficulties connected with his high position, his wife’s presence, and the general Soviet conditions. Of course, Marie-Claire certainly complicated the matter: she wasn’t especially jealous, but she tried to keep her husband from making all sorts of mistakes. I think that she even warned him about this—in fact, I think that this was precisely true, since both Kunavin and Vera Ivanovna were not particularly enamored of Marie-Claire at the time.

Actually, as I’ve already noted, Vera Ivanovna existed for the purpose of distracting Mashenka [Russ. diminutive for Marie] from Maurice. This was

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her number-one duty. Besides, I remember that once Marie-Claire asked me offhandedly whether I knew Vera Ivanovna Gorbunova, an interpreter from the Ministry of Culture. Having been warned by Kunavin about the possibility of such a question, I answered in the affirmative.

It was at that time that Vera Ivanovna became Marie-Claire’s “close” friend. As a result, she often had to “go out and have fun” with Marie-Claire. She was a KGB major in the Lubianka by day, and the wife of a Soviet party boss by night. However, there were moments when Vera Ivanovna would tire of Marie-Claire, especially in the winter. The Frenchwoman was an unstoppable cross-country skier, and Vera Ivanovna, a full-figured woman, would wear herself out trying to keep up. And so, almost every ski outing ended badly for Vera Ivanovna: she would come down with a cold, while Marie-Claire felt wonderful.

Finally, the night of the dinner at the French Embassy arrived—the first dinner party of many to follow.

We were already embracing each other as intimate friends. We enjoyed ourselves noisily in the luxurious halls of that beautiful residence in the Russe style on the Iakimanka [in the 1960’s, Dmitrova Street]. We ate the famed French onion soup (the very same soup eaten by Louis XIV!) and Parisian partridge, and drank martinis, champagne, and burgundy. I was enchanted by the scarlet roses on the dinner table, fresh every day. According to Marie-Claire, the Air France crews brought in roses from Paris every day for De Jean. It was splendid! Everything in the residence was elegant and attractive, but at the same time simple and cozy. And what wonderful music we listened to, sitting in the living room. Marie-Claire had an excellent record collection.

Soviet freaks of nature that we were, we all felt the same thing at different times, I think: we all felt happy there and wanted our lives to go on in the same environment, having forgotten, of course, for the time being, about politics and ideology, and, first and foremost, who we were and what we were doing there. In reality we were all General Gribanov’s puppets—all of us. Well, it’s possible that Taisiia Savva didn’t know the whole story; maybe Zhorzh didn’t disclose to her his conversation with Kunavin in the Hotel Moscow. Maybe she could only guess what was going on.

And again I could report to Kunavin that the dinner had been held in the ceremonial hall of the embassy, I could list the dishes, and the wines, but I couldn’t report to my boss that Maurice had set his sights on Cherednichenko, Kronberg-Sobolevskaia, or Lidiia Khovanskaia (the preferred choice being the last). Maurice was clearly waiting for something. But what?

Here I must digress a little. I don’t remember exactly whether this happened at the first dinner party or later, but we were sitting at the table, drinking to the health of the new head of the French government, the president of France,

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Chapter Thirty-One