A Russian Journal

by John Steinbeck

  We were introduced to the twenty guests, and we sat down. And here our problem began. If we did not eat, we were urged to eat, and if we did eat, our plates were replenished instantly. And meanwhile the decanters of local wine were passed, and it was a delicious wine, light and full of flavor, and it probably saved our lives. After a few glasses of wine our host stood up, and his wife came from the kitchen and stood beside him, a handsome black-eyed woman with a strong face. The manager drank our health, and drank the health of the United States. And then he appointed his best friend table-master, and this, we were told, is an old Georgian country custom, that the host appoints his friend the master of speeches. And from then on no toast may be made by anyone at the table. If someone wishes to propose a toast, he must pass the word to the table-master, who is usually chosen because of his ability to make speeches. Then the toast is made by the table-master. This saves the guests a great deal of speaking.

  The new table-master made quite a long speech. And it must be remembered that even a short speech was long the way it had to be here, for every sentence had to be translated from Georgian to Russian, and from Russian to English. And God knows what ideas were lost or confused on the way, particularly as this dinner progressed. The table-master was a local farm economist, and after the usual courteous remarks in his first speech he got into his own hobby. He deplored the accidents and the misunderstandings that were forcing the Americans and the Russians apart, and he had, he said, an answer to this, and his answer was trade. He said that a trade treaty should be established between Russia and America, for Russia needed desperately the things that America could manufacture—the farm machinery, the tractors, the trucks, the locomotives. And he suggested that the United States might need some of the things that Russia produced, and he mentioned precious stones, and gold, and wood pulp, and chrome, and tungsten. He had apparently been thinking and brooding on this problem for a long time. It is very probable that he did not know many of the difficulties which stood in the way of such an understanding, and we must admit that we did not know them either.

  Since we were foreigners and could not pass a written note to the table-master, we were permitted to answer his toast. And we proposed a toast to the abolishment of curtains of all kinds—of iron curtains, and nylon curtains, and political curtains, and curtains of falsehood, and curtains of superstition. We suggested that curtains were a prelude to war, and that if war should come it could be for only one of two reasons—either through stupidity, or through intent, and if it was through intent on the part of any leaders, then those leaders should be removed, and if it was through stupidity, then the causes should be more closely inspected. And we proposed that since no one, not even the most stupid and belligerent of men, could imagine that a modern war could be won by anyone, then any leader on any side who seriously proposed war should be hunted down as an insane criminal and taken out of circulation. Capa has seen a great deal of war, and I have seen a little, and both of us feel very strongly on the subject.

  At the end of our toast the wine fairly leaped from the decanters, and everyone at the table stood up, and everyone insisted on touching his glass to the glass of everyone else at the table. And there was the intimate Georgian toast. Each man holding a glass links his arm with his neighbor’s arm and drinks from his own glass. The women leaned in from the kitchen, and around the entranceway the neighbors had gathered, and the wine decanters were passed out to them.

  The Georgians we met are like the Welsh. In any group of, say, ten men, there would be at least seven fine voices. And at this table now the singing broke out, magnificent choral singing. They sang the songs of the Georgian shepherds of the mountains, and the old fighting songs. And the voices were so good, and the chorus was so good, that they seemed to be almost a professional group, and they were not. And then the tempo quickened, and two men took chairs, and turned them over their knees, and used them for drums, and the dancing started. The women came out of the kitchen and danced, and the men leaped up from the table and danced. And the music was the chorus of male voices, and the patted chair bottoms, and the clapping of hands.

  It was magnificent dance music. Sometimes a man would dance alone, and sometimes a woman alone, and sometimes they danced together, in formal quick steps, traditional dances of Georgia. And this is how it was when we stopped for just a bite to eat and a glass of wine in a Georgian farmhouse. We had to tear ourselves away.

  As our car dashed down the hills back to Batum, it began to rain again.

  We were taking the train to Tiflis that night, and we were supposed to go to the theater before train time. And so heavy were we with fatigue, and food, and wine, and impressions, that the theater left not very much mark on us. It was Oedipus Rex played in Georgian, and our eyes were barely open enough to see that Oedipus was a handsome man with a flashing gold tooth, and that his red wig was magnificently red. He played on a staircase, up and down and up and down. He declaimed his lines with force and beauty. And when Oedipus beat his own eyes out, and tore his bloody shirt, our eyes were almost closed, and we propped them open. The audience spent half its time turning and looking at us, the visiting Americans. We were only a little less rare than visiting Martians here, and we couldn’t have appeared to advantage, for we were half asleep. Our host led us out of the theater, and pushed us into a car, and got us up the stairs of the train, and we were like sleepwalkers. We didn’t have any quarrel with the guard that night about open windows. We fell into our berths and went to sleep almost immediately.

  In these terrific Georgians we had met more than our match. They could out-eat us, out-drink us, out-dance us, out-sing us. They had the fierce gaiety of the Italians, and the physical energy of the Burgundians. Everything they did was done with flair. They were quite different from the Russians we had met, and it is easy to see why they are so admired by the citizens of the other Soviet republics. Their energy not only survives but fattens on a tropical climate. And nothing can break their individuality or their spirit. That has been tried for many centuries by invaders, by czarist armies, by despots, by the little local nobility. Everything has struck at their spirit and nothing has succeeded in making a dent in it.

  Our train got into Tiflis about eleven o’clock, and we slept until just a little before that time, and struggled into our clothes, and went to our hotel, and slept some more. And we did not eat, not even a cup of tea did we have, for there was one more thing we had to do before we flew back to Moscow the next morning. That night we were to be given a party by the intellectuals and the artists of Tiflis. And if this seems to be turning into a record of eating, that is accurate. It was not that we seemed to be eating practically all of the time—we were.

  Just as the body can become flooded, and inattentive to rich food and wines, so that the perception of spices and vintages disappears, so can a mind become drowned with impressions, overwhelmed with scenes, imperceptive of colors and movements. And we were suffering both from overeating, overdrinking, and overseeing. It is said that in a foreign country impressions are sharp and accurate for a month, and then they become blurred, and the reactions are not accurate again for five years, so that one should stay either one month or five years in a country.

  We had the feeling that we were not seeing things sharply any more. And we had a certain terror of the dinner of the intellectuals of Georgia that night. We were so tired, and we did not want to hear speeches, particularly intellectual speeches. We did not want to think about art, or politics, or economics, or international relations, and particularly we did not want to eat or drink. We wanted mainly just to go to bed and sleep until plane time. But the Georgians had been so kind to us, and so pleasant, that we knew that we had to go to this dinner. It was the one formal thing they had asked us to do. And we should have trusted the Georgians and their national genius more, because the dinner did not turn out at all like what we had suspected it might.

  Our clothes were in outrageous condition. We hadn’t brought very many, you can’t w
hen you fly, and our trousers hadn’t been pressed since we had entered the Soviet Union. And little accidents of food were upon our coats. Our shirts were clean but badly ironed. We were far from beautiful examples of overdressed America. But Capa washed his hair, and that had to do for both of us. We sponged the more removable spots from our clothes, and put on clean shirts, and we were ready.

  They took us in the funicular railway straight up the cliff to the great restaurant at the top which overlooks the whole of the valley. It was evening when we went up, and the city was lighted below us. And the evening sky was golden behind the black Caucasus peaks.

  It was a big party. The table seemed about a mile long. It was set for about eighty people, for the dancers of Georgia were there, and the singers, and the composers, and the makers of motion pictures, and the poets and novelists. The table was covered with flowers and beautifully decorated and set, and the city was like strings of diamonds below the cliff. There were many handsome women singers and dancers.

  The dinner started, as all such dinners do, with a few stuffy speeches, but the Georgian nature, and the Georgian genius, couldn’t tolerate it, and it went to pieces almost immediately. They just are not stuffy people, and they could not contrive to be for very long. Singing broke out, individual singing and group singing. And dancing broke out. And the wine passed. And Capa did his famous kazatzki, which is not graceful, but it is remarkable that he can do it at all. Perhaps the sleep we had got gave us new life, and perhaps the wine helped a little, for the party went on very late into the night. I recall a Georgian composer who raised his glass, and laughed, and said, “To hell with politics!” I recall trying to do a Georgian dance with a handsome woman who turned out to be the greatest Georgian dancer in the world. I recall group singing in the street finally, and that the militia came to see what the singing was about, and joined the chorus. Mr. Chmarsky was a little gay. He was as strange to Georgia as we were. Language barriers went down, national boundaries went down, and there was no need of translators any more.

  We had a wonderful time, and this dinner which we had looked forward to with horror and reluctance turned out to be a magnificent party.

  In the dawn we dragged ourselves back to our hotel. There was no purpose in going to bed, for our plane would leave in a very few hours. We were half dead packing our bags, but some way we got to the airport, we will never know how.

  It was the old routine of getting to the airport in the dark before the dawn. And our hosts came down in a big car to take us there. They looked a little green around the gills, and we felt that way. The all-night party had not given us a great deal of energy at the end. We came to the airport with our baggage, and our cameras, and our films, just in the pre-dawn, and as usual went to the restaurant and had tea and big biscuits. On the starting line at the other end of the field the Russian military fighter craft took off in pairs and went out on patrol duty.

  Mr. Chmarsky was tired and a little inattentive. On our side of the field a big transport plane, again a C-47, warmed up and people got into it, and we asked if it was our plane, and we were told that it was not. And it took off. In an hour we inquired again about our plane. Now it seemed it was our plane that had taken off. The Kremlin gremlin was at work again. We complained a little bitterly. No one had told us we were to go on that plane. Even Chmarsky became indignant, and he had a long and explosive conversation with the commandant of the airport, a conversation that had a great many hand gestures, and the use of those Russian words that have consonants we cannot pronounce. It sounds like a series of firecrackers. Mr. Chmarsky threatened to report the whole incident to whatever place you report such incidents, and the commandant was sad. And then his face lighted up and he said, “You will go in a special plane. It is being readied now.”

  And we were properly impressed and very happy about it, because we’d never gone anyplace in a special plane in our lives, and we rather imagined we could stretch out on the floor and go to sleep. The plane was to leave in one hour. It would take that long to be made ready. Back to the restaurant we went, and had more tea, and more big biscuits.

  At the end of an hour we made another inquiry. And it seemed that an engine needed a little work, and it might just possibly be thirty-five minutes more before we took off in our “special plane.”

  Our hosts meanwhile were wilting and dying on the vine. We tried to get them to go back to Tiflis and go to bed, but they were very courteous and they would not. They would see us off to Moscow. Two more glasses of tea, and forty-five minutes, and we inquired again. It seemed, said the commandant, that a delegation of Turks, representing the Turkish government, were on their way to Moscow to take part in the celebration of the eight-hundredth anniversary of that city. And they were going to go on the plane with us, if we did not mind; they were to share our special plane, if we would permit it. Now we have no great liking for the Turkish government, but when it was put to us that way, we couldn’t refuse a whole sovereign nation’s representatives the right to go on our little special plane to Moscow. We were very big about it, we granted the permission.

  “Let them board the plane, and they can go with us,” we said.

  There was just one bit of trouble, they were not here yet. They were still in Tiflis, they would be out in half an hour.

  Back to the restaurant we went, and had two more glasses of tea, and more big biscuits. The sun rose, and the air became hot, and the Russian patrol craft took off and came in. We had that sandy feeling under the eyes that comes from complete and overwhelming fatigue. And at the end of an hour we went back to the commandant, and even Mr. Chmarsky was getting quite excited by now. Where were the Turks?

  Well, it seemed that their train had not reached Tiflis yet. It had been delayed somewhere along the line, and since they had been promised permission to go on our plane, the commandant did not think that he could very well leave the Turkish delegation stranded here, and would we mind waiting perhaps another half hour.

  The level of the tea in our bodies had reached the thorax. And we went back to the restaurant, and drank another glass, and it bubbled out of our mouths. Chmarsky put his head down in his hands, and I reminded him of our definition of gremlins, and of his answer that in the Soviet Union they do not believe in ghosts.

  I said, “Mr. Chmarsky, do you believe in ghosts now?”

  And he raised weary eyes, and then banged his fists on the table, and ran out to the commandant, shouting.

  Our hosts from Tiflis were now squatting on the ground under a tree in the garden of the airport, sound asleep. But we couldn’t go to sleep, because our plane was to leave in thirty-five minutes.

  Two and a half hours later the Turks’ baggage arrived—twenty fat suitcases in a truck—but no Turks. And it developed that after an all-night trip on the train the Turks had felt a little sandy, a little grainy, and they had gone to a hotel to take a bath, and have some breakfast, and rest up a little bit. The commandant was very sorry, it was an international matter, and if we wouldn’t mind letting the Turks on our plane, we would make him the happiest man in the world, and incidentally probably save his job and his reputation.

  Again we were magnanimous. And we had discovered one scientific truth: we knew exactly how much the human system can hold, and we had reached that point.

  At twelve-thirty the Turks arrived. They were fat Turks—four men and two women. We didn’t know what they were going to do with twenty great suitcases for a stay of at the most two weeks. We thought perhaps they had brought folding harems with them. They swaggered through the airport, and got in the plane, and the door was about to close when we besieged the plane ourselves. There was a little altercation at the door, but the Turks finally let us in. It turned out that it was not our plane at all, it was the Turks’ plane. And we were not letting them ride with us, they were letting us ride with them, and they didn’t like it a bit. We didn’t want to remind them that we, as American taxpayers, were providing dollars to preserve the democracy of their gre
at state. All we wanted to do was to get on that plane and get the hell out of Tiflis. Mr. Chmarsky was crying a little bit by now, and shaking his fist at everything that moved. He had a plan to write letters to all of the Moscow papers concerning the incident.

  We finally were permitted in the plane, and the Turks—they were well-rounded, well-upholstered Turks—settled in their seats with grunts of distaste at our presence. They glanced suspiciously at our luggage. We must say that they were the nicest-smelling Turks we have ever encountered. Everyone of them smelled like a two-dollar haircut. And I have a feeling that while we waited at the hot airport they had been bathing in attar of roses.